Styrofoam Throne

by David Bone

  I was still trying to stop my brain from sloshing around when Jack locked eyes with me.

  “Hey, Dono, since I’m running a circus of unreliable drug addicts and alcoholics, I need you to fill in as a cast member.”

  I stood in silent shock.

  “Does that stupid look on your face mean okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Follow me.”

  Jack led me into the costume room and pulled a Wolfman mask out of a box. It stunk like hell. He handed me wolf hands too, and I put the hairy claws on first. Just then, Dracula came into the room.

  “What the fuck?!” Dracula said, raising his arms. “Some piss-bucket, nacho bitch comin’ in on my stage? My stage? This is unacceptable, Jack.”

  “Easy, Colin,” Jack said. “We’re too short staffed for this today.”

  Dracula kept at it.

  “This fucking piece-of-shit kid almost killed me last night.”

  Jack was unresponsive. Dracula pressed a finger into my chest.

  “Drac. Attack. Motherfucker.”

  “We don’t have time for that shit,” Jack said. Dracula ignored him.

  “Just watch it,” he told me and clipped my shoulder while storming off.

  “So what’d you do to him last night?” Jack said.

  “Threw firecrackers in his car while he was making it.”

  “Ha!” Jack slapped my back.

  I pulled the Wolfman mask over my head.

  “Okay, you’re gonna be doing a thug role,” he said. “Means you don’t have to speak. Just jump scares. You won’t have to worry about riffing dialogue. Can you act like a werewolf?”

  I looked into the mirror at my furry face, assumed the lurching attack pose of a werewolf, and let out a howl.

  “Great, now it gets hot with that shit on. So make sure you drink lots of water and pop one of these every now and then.”

  Jacked handed me some white pills.

  “Uh, what are these?”

  “Ha, you wish. They’re salt pills. It’s so you don’t get heatstroke. Take them.”

  I pocketed the pills and adjusted my mask.

  “This thing smells like shit.”

  “Yeah, I think the last guy died in it, sorry, pal!”

  I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. I was all suited up and admired myself in the mirror. Jack put his arm around me and looked in the mirror too.

  “Like father, like son!” Jack said with a belly laugh. “I still think I’m hairier though.”

  Jack took me to the Haunted Forest room. It was densely packed with fake trees and had a mossy rock to hide behind.

  “Alright, real simple. Hide behind the rock and when you hear someone come in, pop out, act like you’re going to kill ’em and chase ’em into the next room.”

  I gave a thumbs up. Jack flipped a switch behind a curtain and left. “Forest at Night” sounds thickened the atmosphere.

  It was a quick room. Some were meant to be longer. This one was just a classic shock scare, or a “boo room.” Non-speaking roles were featured less often in the Castle but were the most important in keeping the place scary. The set-piece rooms were spooky looking but mostly funny. They weren’t able to actually make you jump in fright like a properly timed shock from the dark.

  I positioned myself behind the rock and waited for people to come through. Before any did, I was already drenched in sweat from being trapped under wolf skin. The mouth allowed little room for the passage of air, so I had to make my breathing deliberate. It was a slow start to the day since the rest of the town seemed to have ditched everything too. The longer I waited, the more nervous and scared I felt about a customer coming through.

  Finally, I heard screams come from the room before me and psyched myself up. Three teenagers ran into my room and stopped in the middle of it.

  “This room sucks,” one said.

  “Yeah, why’s there a forest in a castle anyways?” the second said.

  “There ain’t shit in here, keep—”

  I burst out from behind the rock, swinging my arms wildly, and let out a scream that was way too high pitched to be scary.

  “Hahahaha, Wolfman sucks!”

  Embarrassed, I waited for the next group while continuously coughing to make sure my throat was clear.

  Next, I got a good scare in. It freaked the shit out of the plebes and they ran through the room, clutching each other’s shoulders in front of them. With a simple and strong “Arrrrggghh” I had turned a room that sucks into one to run from. And transformed myself into a minimum-wage walking terror.

  I repositioned myself and waited. It was a good thing I had a mask on to hide my less-than-terrifying, beaming smile.

  The job didn’t take much, just good timing. I repeated the scare over and over. It worked better on some than others. Customers’ comments ranged from “Fuck!” to “Fuck you!” Either one was a reaction, which was all I was looking for.

  The day’s heat dragged on, slow and thick, but I had a blast in the Wolfman loop. It took a while just for my shoulders to drop and accept that this was all actually happening. Everything was so good, how could it actually be real?

  After lunchtime, a wave of people holding black and white fliers passed through. I knew the Castle didn’t distribute anything and wondered where they were coming from.

  No one passed through for a half hour, then my Haunted Forest started to fill up with the smell of weed. I left my post behind the rock and poked my werewolf head into the Phantom of the Opera room before me. Raw and aggressive heavy metal blasted out of the room’s speakers. I didn’t remember any metal in the Castle before. A disfigured, caped man pretended to play an organ while puffing a joint. Fake blood came from his ears and ran down his neck. This setup was supposed to explain where the “Toccata” outside was coming from, had it been playing in the room.

  “Hey, dude,” I said. The Phantom couldn’t hear me. I placed my paw on him.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” The Phantom turned around, choking on his smoke.

  “Hey, sorry,” I said.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m a werewolf,” I said.

  “No, who. The. Fuck. Are. You.”

  “Oh, I’m Dono.”

  “You’re new?”

  “Yeah, kinda.”

  “I’m Rex.”

  “What’s the music?” I said, nodding up to the speakers.

  “My band,” he said and motioned to a stack of fliers on the organ. “Here, check us out,” he said, handing me one. I looked down and it was a collage of skeletons having sex in every imaginable position. It read: TION—AT THE DITCH! and had some info details.

  “Tee-I-On?” I pronounced.

  “No, dude, it’s Tion,” he said, pronouncing it like “shun.”

  “Tion. What’s that?” I said.

  “It’s the most metal name in the world.”

  “How come?”

  “Dude, it’s the most commonly rhymed syllable in all of metal.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Like,” Rex said, grasping for an invisible mic and making a metal face, “I’ll kill you by decapita-tion! You’re death is hallucina-tion! No need for the prosecu-tion! Our metal is a revela-tion!”

  “Oh, okay, cool.”

  “Yeah. And that’s what our record is gonna be called too,” he said, nodding with confidence.

  “Tion. Like self titled?”

  “No, shun. Like shunned.”

  “Like the name, but Tioned?”

  “Fuck man, you’ll get it when you see the cover.”

  “Sweet. Do—”

  He cut me off. “Wait, shhh. Check out this tom roll.”

  I listened as the drummer made a lengthy fill that sounded like someone falling down a flight of stairs.

  “Yeah, bro,” he said, air drumming and nodding along.

  A group of teenage plebes came through, and Rex sprang into action with fliers.

  “Welcome to my crypt of musi
cal death. Like music? Hear now my symphony of the catacombs. Check out my band,” he said, handing out the fliers.

  The kids were confused why the Phantom was in a local metal band and hanging out with a casual werewolf.

  “Why’s the Wolfman here?”

  “Because metal soothes the savage beast,” Rex said. “See how complacent it’s made him? Hey, if you like true metal, check out my band. We’re playing The Ditch,” he said.

  “Your band sucks,” one of them said and dropped the flier on the floor.

  I jumped on the opportunity and flared into a violent Wolfman rage, chasing them out of the room and past mine.

  I retreated behind my mossy rock with a flier in my hand and looked at it more closely. Tion at The Ditch. Alright, I’m in. Maybe I could get Melody to go.

  Rex poked his head into the Haunted Forest.

  “Thanks, bro,” he said and flashed the devil horns at me. “But seriously, check my band out.”

  I went back to work with the werewolf act and finished the day with strobed-out eyes and the taste of stage fog in the back of my throat. I never wanted to go back to picking up turds again. I was a plebe a couple of weeks ago and now a famous monster. A professional exhibit. Holding this newly appointed power ruled. But I was also in disbelief of it. Finally running with the pack, I just hoped they didn’t eat me alive at the first sign of weakness.

  8

  I told Jack it was the best day of my life and he threw a T-shirt at my face. I unfolded it. It read “Castle Dunes Cast Member” in Old English letters and had a sketch of the Castle on the front.

  “Welcome aboard, Wolfman. I heard good things about you today. You’re our new substitute for any roles that go abandoned for whatever reason.”

  I went to hug Jack and as I did, he poured a beer on my head.

  “That’s how Castle Dunes hugs,” he said, laughing more than usual. I loved it. I had been baptized. I wondered if “any roles that go abandoned” also meant Dracula’s post.

  I didn’t take that shirt off for the rest of the summer. It was my new family crest. If I was walking around the pier or town and someone said “Nice shirt!” I could be like, “Yeah, I totally work there. No big deal,” and just blow their mind. No one ever said that, but I was ready if they did.

  I did the Wolfman job for a couple more days and even though I repeated the same action over and over, I loved it. It was a cathartic loop, howling at a painted moon. But it made me restless after hours. I wanted to keep going, tearing shit up and screaming at people more than ever.

  “You wanna go fuck shit up?” Renaldo asked with a secretive nod and a baseball bat in hand. I was still riding the Wolfman buzz after work and didn’t want to go home anytime soon.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “C’mon, let’s go.”

  Renaldo took me down the Dunes coast to a new tract of homes on Sea Grave Road that were about seventy percent finished. They had windows, roofs, and walls without paint, but no carpet, doors, or any finishing details. The recently paved road was sporadically lined with Porta Potties for construction workers. Renaldo picked up a stray two-by-four and handed it to me.

  “Here’s yours. Let’s go.”

  I took the long piece of wood and followed him inside one of the houses. It didn’t smell like any house I’d been in before. There was no stench of Lean Cuisine, suffocating dryer sheets, perfumed laundry detergent, or stale cigarette smoke. It smelled like a hardware store and a lumber yard put together.

  “Watch out for nails and shit, dude,” Renaldo said, bolting up the stairs. “Okay, check it out. See this wall?”

  It was a freshly finished drywall in the master bedroom.

  “Yeah,” I said, still unsure where this was going. Kind of.

  “These walls are total shit. Take a swing, dude.”

  “You first,” I said.

  “Batter up!” Renaldo yelled and swung for the bleachers right into the wall. The bat pierced the drywall with a thud and stuck there.

  “Ha! See, man? Now you.”

  Fuck it, why not? I swung and ripped a hole into the wall next to Renaldo’s. I immediately felt the satisfaction of destruction.

  “Good one, dude,” Renaldo said and took another swing of his own. I didn’t need to be invited twice. We were both attacking the walls of the master bedroom like they were closing in on us. We moved on to smashing up the whole place. We broke every single window, dry toilet, and mirrored closet in sight. We even poked holes in the ceiling, laughing our asses off as we got covered in powdery drywall.

  “You look like a ghost,” I said, out of breath.

  He held up a shard of mirror to his face. “I look like a fucking white dude,” he laughed. “Hey, there’s twenty-nine more houses. Wanna fuck up another?”

  “Hell, yeah, man. This is way radder than I thought it was gonna be.”

  “Right?”

  We went into another house a few doors down. They were all exactly the same inside and out. My approach to house number two was more experienced and scientific. I ran around the first floor bashing out windows like I was being timed for it. I could hear Renaldo doing the same upstairs. Each time I broke something, I felt better. I don’t know what about, but it was good. And the more I did it, the more calm I felt. Proud even. Renaldo came downstairs.

  “Nice work down here, I really like what you’ve done to the place,” he said.

  For some reason, that was funnier than it should have been and I couldn’t stop laughing.

  We went outside, and I viewed the Porta Potties much differently than before. I ran up to one and pushed it over. The door swung open and a flood of blue fluid poured out on the ground.

  “Fucking sweet!” Renaldo ran to do the same to another.

  We eventually tipped every single one over and sat down on the curb. Renaldo lit up a joint and we passed it back and forth.

  “Dude, we should do this, like, all the time,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know. But we can’t. It has to be random. Or else they hire a security guard and then you’re screwed if you get caught.”

  “Have you, like, ever slept here before?”

  “Nah, I don’t want to wake up with a gun in my face.”

  “Yeah, no. Good point. I should take Melody here.”

  “Chicks don’t like smashing things.”

  “I mean . . . to, like, smash her.” After raging in the Castle all day and tearing up the neighborhood all night, I was ready to get more aggressive with everything.

  “Ha! Nice. But I don’t think she’d dig it, bro. Plus, I don’t want everyone finding out and coming in my homes, fucking them up.”

  I needed to book more time with Melody. The kiss was cool but I was going for a promotion. I figured it went well in the water last time, why not try again? So we went swimming before work. I had always avoided it in the past, but now with Melody, the beach started to make a lot more sense. We floated around close to the pier. Raised on the columns, the Castle was even taller when looking up at it from the water. You could hear the occasional scream as someone ran out of the Castle exit. The “Toccata.” People laughing on the pier. Bells ringing out of carnival booths.

  “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Melody said.

  “Shit, I’m doing it already.”

  “You don’t want to do that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at Colin, he’s been here for years. He’s fucked now.”

  “Seems like he’s got it made.”

  “Are you kidding? This is just a summer job. You know what he does the rest of the year?”

  “I dunno.” Ever since I first laid eyes on the Castle, I hadn’t thought about any other future.

  “He’s a busboy at Ye Olde Times,” she said.

  Ye Olde Times was a Renaissance-themed dinner and tournament experience two towns over. I guess it was cool but not really.

  “So what do you really want to do?” she asked.

&
nbsp; “Make horror movies then.” It seemed like the same thing to me.

  “Horror movies hate me,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If drinking, smoking pot, and having sex means you deserve to die, then I’m screwed.”

  We both laughed and started making out in the water. I kinda went from being the guy who survives in the movie to the one who dies too. Not kinda. I wanted to be that guy. It had become my goal.

  “Up there,” she said, nodding to the Castle, “I can be the bad guy. I can scare the shit out of some big idiot and make him run. Well, you know.”

  I remembered a night ago when I scared the shit out of a school bully by calling his name out. Harmless yet thoroughly satisfying vengeance.

  “I wish I could invite everyone I ever knew that was a dick to me to the Castle, terrorize the living hell out of them, and make them pay for the pleasure,” I said. “I wouldn’t even need to scream in their face. I could do live Mirror of Death oracles that would make them cry.”

  “Sounds kinda angry there,” she said.

  “Nah . . .” I didn’t think it was my anger. It was the Castle’s. I would just be filling a role that wielded it. A perfect fit in my mind, but Melody’s eyes looked sympathetic.

  “Anyways,” I said. “What’s the gnarliest thing that’s ever happened to you in the Castle?”

  “I was playing a dead schoolgirl role and speaking in a little girl’s voice, when this older guy came in by himself and I went, ‘Daddy? It’s me. Why did you make me cry?’”

  “Creepy.”

  “Yeah, totally. And he grabbed his chest and fell to the floor. Had a heart attack right there. Oops.”

  “Jesus Christ, did he die?”

  “No, but how messed up is that? I don’t do that anymore. What’s the gnarliest thing that ever happened to you in the Castle?”

  Should I tell her? Should I say it? Fuck it.

  “You,” I said.

  Melody smiled and went underwater. I couldn’t see where she was. After a dozen long seconds, I thought I might have sunk her somehow. Like, tell a girl how you feel and then they turn to stone. But she popped back up, right in front of me.

  “Why are you so nice to me?” she said. She had her bathing suit bottoms in her hand and wrapped her legs around my waist.