by David Hudnut
“C’mon Rob, lets go,” Amelia pleaded from the Prius, her voice uneven.
The German Shepherd snarled and started barking viciously, up again on all fours. It crept toward Rob.
This time, Pierced-Nipples Bruce didn’t say anything to stop it.
“Better do what your wife says, Rob,” Tony sneered.
With a direct gaze, Rob drilled Tony in the eyes. Rob felt hot and angry. He had played along with their game and he had lost. “Bullshit,” he hissed in a low voice, not wanting Amelia to hear him through the open window. To Rob’s irritation, his restraint simply made him appear too timid to voice his real opinions to these intimidating men.
Amelia eyed the dog nervously. She rolled her window up most of the way for protection, in case the dog got too close. “Rob, please get in the car!” she pleaded, her voice brimming with tears. She was afraid of these awful men but also angry at Rob for putting them in this situation in the first place.
“You know you guys took the space from us,” Rob growled through clenched teeth. He wanted to turn this situation on its head so badly, he was shaking with frustration and restrained rage. But he wouldn’t take that chance. It was too dangerous.
Tony sensed Rob’s rising tide of anger and responded similarly. Tony’s face flushed red with sudden fury. The skin around his eyes quivered crazily. “Do we have a problem? Rob? I’d hate to make you look bad in front of your lady and your kid.” He increased the pressure on Rob’s hand, and it felt like crushing steel. “Why don’t you run along now.” He whacked a heavy hand on Rob’s shoulder.
Rob shook from the weight of the guy’s arm. Tony was much taller and heavier than Rob.
“We men have work to do,” Tony said.
The other three men laughed openly at Rob. Rex the dog barked repeatedly, teeth flashing like white daggers, a dangerous warning.
Tony patted Rob’s shoulder roughly several more times. Rob felt himself quaking under the force that sent shockwaves through his whole body. Tony released Rob’s hand but stood his ground. Barely containing his mounting rage, he stared Rob down and said: “I think it’s time for you to go, buddy.”
Rob knew he was out of options.
Tony had passed some kind of emotional tipping point and looked ready to snap.
To attack, Rob thought. Is this what ‘Roid Rage looks like? This guy’s certainly a candidate. Rob knew he was powerless to shift the tide of this situation now.
Short of turning into some hulking, muscle-bound God of Vengeance, bashing some sense into these guys, and throwing that damn barking dog into someone’s backyard, there was nothing he could do except walk away.
He had lost the showdown. He was the gunslinger lying in the street, staring up at the faraway clouds, not yet having deciphered the full extent of the fatal rupture visited on his internal organs by his opponent’s pistol slug. He was the loser. Rob turned and slunk back to his car.
“Good luck finding a space,” Tony taunted, dark mirth in his voice, whitened teeth flashing in contrast.
His buddies chuckled victoriously.
The dog advanced toward Amelia’s window, teeth fully bared and growling low.
She rolled the power window the rest of the way up.
Pierced-Nipples Bruce did nothing to hold back his dog.
“Hey Bruce,” Flaming-Skull Clint said to Pierced Nipples, “I think Rex is ready to eat.”
Pierced Nipples said “Yeah, smelling fresh meat makes him hungry.” Bruce sneered at Amelia and winked while licking his lips. “Rex, you ready for an early lunch, boy?”
Rex snarled enthusiastically.
As Rob was about to get back in the Prius, he glared at the men. “Thanks,” he said petulantly.
“Anytime,” Tony grinned sarcastically.
Tony’s three pals laughed heartily.
Jason said “I think you hurt his feelings.”
More laughter from the four men.
Rob slammed his door and put the car in gear.
The sound must have triggered the German Shepherd. Foaming at the mouth, it lunged at Eva’s back seat window. It went up on hind legs, barking savagely, clawing at the glass with its forepaws, leaving dirty smears. Thick ropes of slobber painted the window.
Eva shrieked in terror.
“Go Rob!” Amelia panicked. She spun helplessly in her seat, wanting to protect her daughter but also flinching back from the attacking dog. Even with the safety glass between them and the dog, she felt endangered and exposed.
Rob gassed the car and it lurched forward, then stopped. He’d jammed his foot down so hard it slipped off the accelerator and hit the floor board, stalling their escape.
The four men broke into childish jeers at Rob’s driving foible.
The dog barked and clawed frantically, still leaning onto the car. It made several more swipes at Eva’s backseat window with its clawed paws.
Inside the car, Eva brayed in terror, her voice climbing into piercing high shrieks “mah-MEEEEEEEEE!”
Rob and Amelia both winced painfully at the awful sound.
“Go Rob GO!!!!” Amelia screamed.
Rob’s Teva sandal was tangled in the gas pedal and it took several more terrifying seconds to wiggle it free before he jammed on the gas and the car sped off.
“Bye Rob,” Tony sneered.
Bruce, Clint, and Jason chimed in with a collective “Bye Rob” and waved at the Prius as it shrank into the distance.
The dog barked antagonistically from where it stood in the street.
Rob glanced into the rearview mirror at the men, furious.
Eva was sobbing in her car seat and reached out for her mommy. “I don’t like that doggy! Hold me Mommy!”
“I can’t right now honey, we’re driving.” Under her breath, Amelia hissed “Assholes.” This situation was too intense to edit out sailor talk now. She turned to face Eva and tried to keep her own tears out of her voice. “It’s okay, sugar, nothing to worry about now. That awful dog is gone. It can’t hurt you. You’re safe now.” She rubbed her daughter’s knee vigorously.
Eva calmed slightly.
To Rob, Amelia said: “Don’t worry about it, honey, those guys were nothing but a bunch of jerks. They don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. We’ll find another parking space.” She was trying nobly to be supportive and hold everyone together, herself included. Especially herself.
Rob didn’t respond. At that moment, he felt like he was nothing, like he didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. If Eva and Amelia hadn’t been around, I would have done something drastic, he thought. But he knew he wouldn’t, knew his sudden courage was bluster. Doing something drastic would have been disastrous. If he’d been alone, he would have driven off. Those guys were huge! It was four against one, and they had that trained attack dog. What was with that dog anyway? Had it smelled something? No way, it couldn’t have.
Could it?
What had gotten Rob out of the car was a sense of fair play combined with his concern for his child. He hadn’t been thinking about disastrous consequences. He had been thinking about how his daughter didn’t deserve to trudge countless blocks to the beach because some selfish punks had no common courtesy.
We got to that space first. It was ours, fair and square. Those guys were idiots.
But they weren’t dumb galoots like he wanted to believe. They had been clever enough to make Rob feel like he was the idiot, especially with their impromptu skit about searching for Rob’s fictional name placard on the sidewalk.
They probably all got A’s in drama class. What a creative bunch. Give them all a gold star and a cookie, Rob fumed to himself in profound exasperation. Fuckheads.
“Relax Rob,” Amelia said shakily, “try and forget about them.”
Fat chance.
. . .
4
Sandy Bradshaw sat outside on the patio of his Venice Beach duplex reading his morning paper (yeah, he still got one of those). He wore his usual weekend attire: a fad
ed Surfrider Foundation T-shirt and old swim trunks. A commotion on the street caught his attention. He lowered his newspaper and peered through the screen of ivy that shielded his patio from the street.
Four muscle-headed jocks and their German Shepherd were harassing a scrawny guy standing in front of a Prius idling in the middle of the road. It looked like the guy’s wife and kid were inside the Prius. Sandy couldn’t make out what anyone was saying, but the jocks obviously had at least nine assholes between the four of them. Sandy considered intervening, but he was 71, and some things weren’t his business. He had enough issues of his own. Besides, something about the scrawny guy struck Sandy as strange. His guts told him to leave well enough alone.
Sandy Bradshaw always trusted his guts.
He remembered being stationed in Germany in the 1950s and 60s when he was still in the Army.
Whenever he had furlough time and could get clearance from the higher-ups, he would hop on the first train out of the country: Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, it didn’t matter where he went. Despite the scars of World War II that disfigured the buildings, the countryside and the people, Europe was new and exciting to Sandy. He wanted to explore it.
One fact he had always marveled at was that everyone in Europe had their own unique look. Not just their clothes or hairstyles, but their faces. Back home in the states Sandy knew loads of German guys, Italians, Swedish, Danish, the whole works. And plenty of Frenchmen. His neighborhood was full of them. But none of the people of foreign ancestry that he’d known at home looked much like their brethren living in Europe. And some of those foreign faces were so downright strange, Sandy had thought they might be Martians or Venusians. The scrawny guy standing in the street struck Sandy the same way: strange, weird, alien. He couldn’t say for sure why, but the guy did. Sandy mused that the four meatheads harassing the poor guy didn’t look exactly ‘normal’ but they didn’t look strange. They looked like pricks, sure, but not strange. There were tattooed assholes like those four goons everywhere you went these days.
So what was it about that guy? It wasn’t his face. It wasn’t his clothes or his body language. There was nothing specific Sandy could point to. But he felt distinct revulsion bubble from his guts up into his throat. He tried to swallow it down. Your gorge is rising, his mother Eloise would have said (and promptly uncorked the bottle of castor oil she kept in the medicine chest). Sandy suddenly wanted to get bombed and obliterate his consciousness for the rest of the day (beer worked far better than castor oil, he had learned).
This is nuts, Sandy thought. Why is that guy bothering me so much? And why do I suddenly feel like puking buckets?
Sandy walked inside and slid the patio door closed. Although he was pretty sure those four meathead jocks were out of line, and his head told him to step in and say something on behalf of that guy and his family, his guts no longer wanted any part of their confrontation.
Not because he felt that the jocks’ juvenile behavior was justified. Far from it. But something about that guy wasn’t…right.
You don’t want to help that poor family, do you Sandy? You don’t want to help them at all. You want to—
He shook his head, trying to clear the strange thoughts. A gray fog settled into his mind, muting his conscious awareness. He went into his garage and looked at his work bench where he did his wood carving. Seeing his familiar workshop caused the gray fog to subside slightly.
Sandy’s workbench was covered with woodworking tools and several in-progress teak wood sculptures of famous surfers. The largest piece was a 1/4 scale carving of Duke Paoa Kahanamoku standing heroically beside his long board. Three smaller 1/12 scale pieces were action poses of traditional and modern surf moves: Off the Top, Riding the Tube, and Hanging Ten with a Soul Arch. These pieces featured surfing’s young guns: Laird Hamilton, Mike Parsons and that soul-surfer kid Rob Machado.
One of Sandy’s ‘fun’ carvings rested in the middle of the bench: a humorous surfman riding a teak wood wave, wearing a large tiki mask, balancing on his board on one foot while clutching a spear over his head in a classic “the-natives-are-restless” pose. Although traditional tiki masks were generally dramatic and shocking, Sandy always found them endearing. But right now, his sculpture wasn’t endearing at all. It was unnerving. The mask suddenly seemed…malicious. Was it glaring at him? Had it just moved? The thing’s wicked eyes and horrid expression made him think of
(that guy outside)
ravenous cannibals or…worse.
Sandy turned the sculpture so the tiki surfman was facing the wall.
Strange, never felt that way about it when I started it. I thought this dude would turn out like a ‘Big Daddy Ed Roth goes to Hawaii’ sort of thing. But now…it’s just…hideous…
Sandy shivered where he stood. The dusty gas-powered chainsaw on the shelf beneath the work bench drew his eye.
He had dabbled with chainsaw carving in the late 1970s, but it was so loud, he abandoned it in favor of his smaller hand-carved teak sculptures. Plus, he had feared he would make the mistake of carving with the chainsaw while stoned, and was convinced he would cut off a leg or a hand.
Without warning, the same gray mental fog he’d experienced moments ago returned in a billowy storm. He was no longer aware of what he was doing on a conscious level. Sandy cleared off the top of his work bench with a haphazard sweep of his forearm. Carving tools, sand paper, and the nearly-finished Tiki surfman sculpture tumbled over the side of the work bench and clattered to the cement floor. Sandy’s mind spun with a vortex of dread.
He grabbed the chainsaw off the shelf and put it on the work bench. He unscrewed the gas cap and checked the tank. Dry as a bone. He kept a one-gallon gas can behind his restored 1966 Plymouth Satellite. When he opened the can, the sweet smell of gasoline filled the hot garage. The can was a quarter full. More than enough to fill the saw. With his thoughts still muted and mushy beneath the strange gray fog in his head, he put gas in the chainsaw. Then he picked it up and yanked the starter cord. It rattled but didn’t take. He tried a dozen more times without success. The spark plug must have been shot. His shoulder was throbbing and he knew in a less foggy corner of his mind that it would be aching by tomorrow.
He used an adjustable wrench from his tool box to unscrew the spark plug. The points were rusted over. No chance.
Now what did I need the chainsaw for anyway? I had been outside, watching those four jocks and that guy—
Savage barking came from outside.
Sudden alarm ricocheted through Sandy’s body. The hair on his forearms stood up defensively. With the chainsaw out of commission, he needed a
(weapon)
tool that would still do the job.
What job?
He spotted one of his carving knives in the mess of tools on the floor in front of the workbench.
How’d my tools get on the floor?
Without conscious thought, he picked up a large carving knife and held it like a dagger.
What the hell am I thinking, a vague, echoey, sensible voice whispered from near his forehead.
More barking outside.
A primal fear seized him, flooding his thoughts with a red tide of terror. Deep in his mammalian brain, an ancient circuit closed and vital information flowed on a river of adrenaline out of a secure, ancestral chamber that had never been accessed in Sandy’s entire life. Not even during the darkest moments of his 12-month tour of Vietnam back in ’68.
The gray fog in his head now pulsed blue and violet in time with the thudding of his heart.
That guy outside…that guy…got to…
His heart rate started to climb.
He tightened his grip on the carving knife and skulked toward the kitchen doorway. Sweat beaded his brow. His heart thudded in his chest.
got to get…before he…
His pulse accelerated dangerously past 180 beats per minute. The fog in his head darkened to violet. Lightning forks of white panic flashed chaotically through his menta
l haze.
before he…I have to…they’re going to…
Sandy’s legs were shaking and could barely hold him up. His knees were going to buckle any second and he would collapse on the floor into a shaking mass of incompetent distress. He wished desperately for something more substantial than sheetrock and stuccoed walls between him and whatever it was outside that was terrifying him so completely.
Harsh words from the street floated through the screen door at the front of the house, followed by a revving engine and hearty laughter. The words hit Sandy’s eardrums like straight pins, making him wince with each syllable. When he retreated toward a corner of the garage he caught his foot on his Shop-Vac. The vacuum’s plastic caster wheels clattered across the concrete pad. The sound echoed in the confines of the garage and speared Sandy’s bowels. He tasted acid in his throat. His digestive system threatened to eject everything it contained from both ends in order to lighten him up for a hasty retreat from whatever it was that was going to get him.
He backed completely into the corner, jamming himself up against the walls. He felt safer with something solid at his back. He waited, holding his carving knife out in front of him.
it’s…they’re…he’s…
going to…
. . .
Buy NIGHT WALK now on Kindle
at Amazon.com
. . .
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID HUDNUT is an artist, musician and storyteller. His stories are super-scary, terror-filled thrill-rides. Most people who read them are never heard from again. He also illustrates cute children’s books. The kids who read his children’s books ARE heard from again. Quite often in fact, because they clamorously demand more books from the author.
To find out more information, visit the author’s website at:
www.DavidHudnut.com
For regular entertainment, visit the author’s blog at:
http://davidhudnut.blogspot.com/