by N. Godwin
“Let go of my arm, asshole!”
“Five bucks, Ken--” Robert tries to yell but we all shush him.
“Man,” I didn’t think he’d really do it!” Genie says with renewed respect. “That was hilarious.”
“Assholes!”
“Ten bucks, Ken,” Horst laughs back.
“He’s got balls,” Tony adds.
“Yeah, big ones!” Andrea and Genie laugh. They catch my eye and we all laugh.
“Last one there is it!” Hobie challenges and we all begin racing in our ridiculous costumes and slippers trying not to trip over ourselves.
We’re racing and huffing and laughing and as we turn the corner we all seem to trip over something invisible at the same time. There is a stinging pain everywhere as I fall forward hard onto the ground on top of Robert as Genie falls on top of me. There is a momentary struggle as we all try to get up but our costumes make moving awkward and we are tangled together.
I see something, a body I think, lying over to the side of the dorm door. I hear the sound of feet running across the oyster shells crunching into our flowers and solitude. I hear them all around us as Kelly screams and all hell breaks loose.
Four sinister shadows suddenly appear over us and I watch as these demons slowly evolve into human forms that I don’t recognize. They are angry, terrifying people who look Hispanic and mad, in their late teens or early twenties, and each one is holding a gun aimed straight at our faces as they sneer down into our looks of confusion and fear. I try to stand up and stop when I realize I am staring down the barrel of an automatic handgun.
“Hola, Antonio!” the biggest one yells. “I know you’re here! Stand your ladrones-ass up!”
Ken is still lying silent and naked on the ground and I see Horst crawling over to his side. He tries to shake him awake but the ugly guy with the sawed-off shotgun jumps over and hits Horst on the back of his head with the butt of his gun. I close my eyes as Horst falls aside. I open them quickly when I hear a high-pitched scream of terror.
The short angry one who’d had his handgun in my face has left me and has Kelly suspended in front of him on her tiptoes as he holds her up by the arm and points his gun to her head.
Kelly’s eyes are fixed and terrified and they have the very same look in them they had the night I first saw her. It’s unbearable, yet I am incapable of movement so I began praying hard with all my might that this is just another one of my slow-motion nightmares where my tongue and legs turn to stone.
“Antonio!” the biggest one yells. “Man, I can’t tell which one is Antonio, they all look like girls to me!”
“He’s gone chotito on us!”
“What the hell is this place?”
As their leader holds Kelly out in front of him the others of their group are going through us, nudging us hard with booted toe or they grab our heads back painfully trying to find the face they so intently seek. Mandy sobs as one of them yanks her head back roughly and spits in her face.
“Antonio, you fucking pussy!” the short angry one yells, almost pulling Kelly’s arm out of its socket. “Stand up now or else I’ll get to kill this nigger on the count of four.” He smiles and looks slowly down her body. “Even better, two niggers for the price of one bullet!” He moves his gun down to her belly and unlocks the safety. “Uno!”
“No, please!” I finally manage to scream. “No! Take me instead!”
A large ugly one with a jagged scar down his face steps over to me and makes a grunting sound as he steps down hard on my back. I hold my breath as he aims his gun at the back of my head.
“I’m going to have a fuck with this one before I kill her,” he tells the others with a high-pitched laugh. “And that one over there, too.”
“Ono.”
“Echar un polvo!”
“Move and I slit your throat!” I hear the one standing over John hiss.
“Tres.”
“No!” I scream.
“Stop!” Tony yells jumping to his feet. “Raoul, it’s me! It’s me, Antonio. Let the kids go. I’m the one you want.”
Raoul twists Kelly’s hair painfully around his fist and smiles down cruelly. “Maybe I kill her just because we had to come all the way up here to get your thieving ass!”
Tony steps up to face down his angry assailant: “I said let the kid go! Come on. I’ll leave with you now! You can kill me later, away from here.”
“No, Tony!” we all cry.
Raoul looks around and chuckles. “They think you are their friend!” he says in disbelief. “They think this lying sack of shit is their friend!” he laughs to the evil others.
“You don’t know the meaning of the word friend!” Tony hisses back.
Raoul pushes Kelly to the ground and steps forward to strike Tony in the face with the back of his gun. “You ran away, pussy!” he says as Tony falls backwards. We watch as Tony struggles to regain his footing. “You think you were so smart to take the money and run. But guess what, asshole--I knew you couldn’t hide!”
“Pretty stupid going on MTV, Antonio!” the one standing on my back laughs.
“Yeah, you really know how to hide, asshole!”
“Let’s just shoot them and get the hell out of here! This place gives me the creeps,” the man over me says stepping off my back and looking around our dark garden.
I crawl quickly over to Kelly’s side and I hug her as she cries silently. The smell of fear and stupidity is all around us. Mandy and Genie crawl up next to us and sob along with Kelly as our sentries stand guard and laugh.
“You were so stupid kids could have tricked you!” Tony shouts at them. “By the way, assholes if you kill me you’ll never see one penny of that money.”
Our outside speakers suddenly begin playing Mozart, part of Ken’s timed security system that comes on automatically at 1:00 a.m., because, he says, classical music will repel deviants. Hopefully, maybe even these deviants.
Two of them suddenly lunge at Tony and began savagely punching him in the face and back and stomach. We hear him trying to suck back his helpless groans. We listen to the sickening sound as our friend spits out blood and gasps in pain, and there is nothing any of us can do.
Raoul laughs. “He don’t care about no money. He just wanted us to find and fucking kill you! He’s sentimental that way. You remember, eh, Antonio?”
“Ladrones!” the youngest one laughs at Tony and slams him in the stomach with his fist.
“Antonio, you will die before the night is over and your new little friends get to watch me kill you!” Raoul says through gritted teeth then he turns to address us. “You will watch us kill your friend Tony,” he says with a smile, laughing harshly. “And if any one of you say a fucking word then we’re going to kill all of you, too!”
Ken moans in place and blessedly moves slightly. At least we all know he’s alive and I sit up ever so slightly and look again to make doubly certain, and he is!
“Hey, Raoul, that guy spoke! Can we kill them all now?” the one with the shotgun asks coming back over to me. He puts his boot on my back and steps down again, hard. I bite my bottom lip and stifle a cry.
“What we need is a bonfire,” Raoul says. He pulls a can of lighter fluid from his side pocket and sprays a steady stream all over Tony. “Hey, what can I say?” he laughs. “We know I’ve always enjoyed a good fire, huh, Antonio?”
Raoul squirts Tony full in his face and laughs over his suffocating gasps. I watch as the fluid sprays out against the wind and saturate Tony’s face and hair. There is so much fluid being sprayed against the wind that it’s blowing back onto Raouls’ hands and shirt yet still he howls with laughter as he pulls a pack of matches out and holds one up to Tony’s face.
“Scared?” he asks. “You should be!” He laughs and strikes a match then holds it toward Tony. “Kiss your ass goodbye.”
Everybody starts sobbing unable to control the madness in front of us as Raoul’s hand moves slowly towards Tony’s face. Out of the corner of my eye I see a
slight flicker, and another until suddenly a giant shadow appears from the side of the dorm, moving at light speed. I watch as this powerful giant rotates his body around with one deft move and springs forward kicking Raoul square in the chest with bone-shattering force. As Raoul slams backwards the match in his hand ignites with the fluid that has trickled down his wrists. Raoul stares at the flames consuming his hands silently for a moment, then begins screaming and waving his arms aloft in the air like human torches. The wind makes the fire leap to his hair, his face and his clothing.
As the powerful entity turns and leaps toward the man standing on my back, I watch as moonlight hits the shadow and it evolves into a terrifying version of Rawly; part man, part beast with lethal eyes consumed by purpose. The surprised man standing on me screams, trying to aim his shotgun at the demon shadow, but Rawly moves quicker than my eyes can follow and shouts as he leaps off the ground and kicks the doomed man in the head and neck.
The man and the gun fall back into the dark earth and I swear that I can hear the very life being kicked out of his angry young body. I breath in deeply and watch in fascination the movements of Rawly’s deadly ballet.
I can feel the ground tremble in front of me as Rawly’s feet touch back down on solid ground. I sit up quickly as he spins to face his next terrified victim and watch as he moves in on his enemy with power, with authority, and with absolute dominion.
Horst and John spring to their feet and join in the melee as Andrea jumps forward and grabs Raoul’s gun while the fire consumes him. We can hear his anguished cries and smell the terrible, terrible scent as his flesh is seared away. In the next moment Andrea has her gun aimed down the nose of the youngest assailant as Alan and Horst disarm him.
“I’ll shoot your ass if I have to!” she tells him angrily.
Rawly has already taken on the other guy now, the one with the huge gun. Before the man can fire a round, Rawly stuns him with a smashing groin kick and he crumples over in pain. As the man screams, the terrifying warrior deftly swings his left foot around and plants a sidekick to his enemy’s knee, shattering bones and muscles. This time the screaming man topples over and Rawly grabs his ankle and twists it savagely to his right then roughly places his huge boot over the man’s throat.
“Move and die!” Rawly says through clenched teeth.
I cannot stand or utter a word. I can only see Rawly and his exquisite, fatal movements, and I am stunned by the sheer majesty of his power. Rawly the man might be repugnant, but Rawly the warrior is absolute, Rawly the warrior is a reckoning to be feared. And I envy his power as I have never envied another.
“Asshole!” Tony yells kicking the fallen man by his feet. “Stupid, stupid asshole!”
We hear Kelly as she kicks Raoul and screams at him while the dudes try to pull her off him. “You evil bastards!” she screams, “never ever, ever again you mean, evil bastards!” she screams kicking her ghosts because Raoul is surely dead.
“Shh, Kelly,” Horst says, “shh, he’s already dead. Come on, little sister.”
“Call 911,” Rawly tells Hobie, “quick before I squash this asshole like the cockroach he is!”
Truth or Dare
“Yeah, this one’s dead, too” the cop tells Rawly again. “This one with the scar must have really pissed you off. See here, you broke his neck in two places.”
“Big loss to society,” the rookie cop says.
“And that one over there is burnt extra crispy,” the lieutenant shudders, watching as the hearse loads up. “Damn, I hate working with crispy critters!”
“What, your Thursday night wasn’t eventful enough?” the rookie jokes to Rawly.
“Shh,” Rawly whispers, fingers to his lips as he nods toward us. We are huddled by the ambulance only a few feet away, watching and listening as if we’re all too anxious to stray too far from Rawly’s side. “You need me to come down and fill out any paperwork?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Ah, Sir, you’re top secret and my orders are to keep you that way.”
“Good, then this never happened,” Rawly says, his eyes coming back over to us, scanning our bandaged and bruised faces. “And it certainly never happened here.”
“We need to assign you a few guards till morning, just in case?”
“Oh, I have plenty of backup,” Rawly insists patting the lieutenant on the back and propelling him in the direction of his squad car.
“I don’t see any backup,” the rookie cop says looking around skeptically.
“Trust me,” Rawly says wearily.
“We do!” Andrea, Alan and Genie say.
“Poor kids, they are pretty shook up.”
“Another good reason for you to go now,” Rawly says opening the door of the patrol car despite the adorations from the officers who keep smiling and bobbing toward us like Japanese samurais at a banquet.
The young cop turns and motions to us. “Hey!” he says. “Y’all lucked out tonight. See this gun here?” he says holding up Raoul’s gleaming silver pistol before our eyes. “This here’s a street sweeper. Every single one of you would have been fish bait if the lieutenant commander here hadn’t come along in time,” he says scanning our rank and file. “If this is your family,” the cop insists, “then deal with it.”
“Oh shut up, Joseph!” the lieutenant says thrusting his young partner inside the passenger side of the car and making an apologetic shrug toward Rawly.
We are silent as the squad car and ambulance pull away. I realize tears are falling down my face on their own accord and I have no control over my thoughts or emotions. I am woozy, lightheaded and unfocused.
But I hug them all, words of comfort and adoration pouring from my lips in happiness and gratitude and whatever emotion springs forward next. I hug them individually then move on to the next until the only one left for me to hug is my disturbing Apollo who’d gone and turned into Harold, then evolved into this demon-commander and mystery of a being called Rawly. Yet I cannot hug this eager beast who stands before me. Our eyes meet and he steps towards me and looks as if he might take me in his arms. I step back quickly.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he says with a weary sigh. He is dressed in camouflage and looks as if he hasn’t slept in a long time.
“Yeah,” I sniffle looking down the front of my costume. I pull the long strands of beads out of my cleavage and let them dangle and run my hand up through my braided hair, giving after thought to my silly costume. My hat is gone and I touch the petals of a flower in my hair and choke back a sob. I let it pass and look up at him and laugh. “Whoever thought I’d be happy to see you?” I laugh again as I wipe tears aside.
“Jimmy-Sue!” the girls say.
“Say something nice to the dude, he just saved our butts!” Ken scolds me.
“Again,” Rawly says as he brushes his hand across his brow and momentarily closes his eyes as he sighs. “Apparently, saving your butt’s turning into a full time job.”
“Yeah, but what a butt!” Tony laughs.
“Hey, Tony, dude you got a light?” Horst jokes.
“Ah man, I’m so sorry!” Tony says. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe what just happened! I wish I could take it back. I could have gotten you all killed! I’m so sorry--”
“Tony, hit the shower, amigo,” Rawly says. “For at least ten minutes. Got it?”
As Tony heads for the shower we all begin to talk at once: “If Jimmy-Sue doesn’t marry you, can I?” Genie asks him as she touches his arm and squeezes his bulging bicep.
“You were wonderful!” Mandy gushes.
“Awesome!”
“Killer!”
“You’re gonna stay for the rest of the party now, right?”
“Yeah!”
“Come on, dude.”
“Yeah, come inside and let’s crank up some music and get’s this party back in gear,” Andrea insists says. “We’ve got some celebrating to do.”
It’s Jimmy-Sue’s birthday after all!”
>
“And you’re only twenty-one once,” Hobie reminds me as I stare at him horrified by where this is leading.
Rawly studies my face for a moment. “No,” he says as their faces fall, “I don’t feel like being an intrusion, not tonight. I’d prefer to keep watch from my tree.”
“No way!” they all say and stare me down. “We want you to stay!”
“Tell him to stay, Jimmy-Sue!”
“Everyone wants him to stay!” they whine at me.
“Wait… you were watching us from up in a tree?” Andrea asks. “That’s kinda creepy.”
“Oh, just--just come on in!” I say begrudgingly and cautiously hold out my hand, palm up. “Let’s go inside,” I say and curl my fingers at him, signifying he’s welcome to stay, seeing how he just saved our butts and all.
Rawly critically stares at my hand with a deep scowl. “Great,” he says, “I get to baby sit a handful of animals and transvestites at 2:22 a.m., my prayers have been answered.”
The Halflings and dudes laugh and surround us as Rawly reaches out and takes my hand. I am still lightheaded and a little woozy but he keeps my hand firmly in his as I lead him inside over the doorstep and into the dorm as the Halflings follow laughing and talking.
As I pull him deeper inside the Halflings scatter to relight the dozens of candles that someone blew out. I stand still looking down at the huge hand caressing my own with burning warmth that frightens and chills me, but does not hurt. This confuses me. I don’t draw my hand back but instead stare up at Rawly, probing his eyes for something I cannot name.
“I don’t know you at all,” I say softly, still transfixed by the feel of his touch on my flesh.
“Yes you do,” he whispers back, “you’re just afraid to admit it.”
They surround us again and pull Rawly away from me and sit him in the center of our circle of our Lamb Chops comforters, pillows, and peonies while the Halflings gather around him as if he were Santa Claus and Zeus combined. Ken steps back in the room with an armful of cold beers he drops down into a pillow. He tosses one to Rawly and puts another on the lump on the back of his head. We watch silently as Rawly tilts his head back and drains his beer.