Bullets, Teeth, & Fists 2

by Jason Beech

  “I don’t see where my benefit is. What can I do with money?”

  “You get your benefits. All you need to do is moan, tramp around the building, and reveal yourself at the end for the paranormal crowd. It’s once a week for God’s sake.”

  “You ask too much.”

  “I demand what we agreed.” Peter pushed his weight back to the front foot.

  “You should never have made me aware. I was happy in oblivion, repeating each day in blissful ignorance until you pulled me into realising my condition. It’s you who owes me.”

  “You live in my place …”

  “It’s my place.” Isaiah barked as he stamped forwards until they stood toe-to-toe.

  Peter’s every sinew twanged. The effect clattered from his teeth. Peter had run from the house to the wild moors after the first time Isiah conjured into view. He had almost broken his ankles in various rabbit and foxholes. He had left his wife alone in bed, frantic with worry at his screams, and had returned to find her the colour of flour after she, too, had encountered him.

  Peter didn’t know how, but Isaiah pulled him to the wardrobe and gestured for him to open its door. Peter complied. Worked to not rattle the handle. He half-expected to see his wife’s ghost point a Banquo-like finger at him. Instead, a room lit by the three-quarter moon lied inside the wardrobe. A vision - an apparition of a time long gone. A blood-pulse stabbed his nostrils. He squinted into the gloom. Two women, dressed in smocks, lied listless. Dark gashes exposed their neck vertebrae. At their feet a man lied equally still, a seventeenth-century farmer, his neck the same as the women’s. His open sightless eyes locked to the ceiling. The longer Peter gaped, the more bodies he noticed. Old women, young women, varieties of men – their clothes hardly more than rags.

  “Is this what you want to trade in?”

  Peter swayed and swung the door with each loss of balance. He planted his feet wide apart to gain stability. “We had an agreement.” Peter’s voice lowered to almost inaudible. “Let’s do it.”

  “You know what I want.”

  “I just have to say yes?”

  “You have to give your permission. All I’ll take is a few hours a day.”

  “You’ll come back out?”

  “Yes.”

  Peter nodded and Isaiah slid into his frame as if he pulled on a new pair of boots. Isaiah swum in his blood, luxuriated in tissue he had not experienced for hundreds of years, and finally took control of his mind.

  Peter gasped for air and realised Isaiah was a liar.

  ***

  The driver banged on his steering wheel. “Come on, Margery, let’s get a move on, this place gives me the creeps.”

  “I have a stone in my shoe, hold your horses.” She had one hand on the mini-van for balance as she emptied gravel from her shoe. “I don’t think there’s any danger of the supernatural in this place.”

  ***

  Peter heard her voice above the fire, above the wash of Isaiah’s red thoughts. His hands reached, lifted, and weighed the sword. He said no. Isaiah said yes. His consciousness seemed smothered by a pillow, though Isaiah’s strength filled his old muscles. Peter couldn’t see anything but gravel as his head swivelled side to side across his chest.

  “I’ll give thee a bloody phantasm, woman,” he heard Isaiah hiss from his own mouth.

  “Oh look,” Margery said. “Here’s the ghost. You could at least have poured flour on your head for effect.”

  Peter heard the screams burst from within the mini-van. He could only see his feet, yet felt his hands rise above his head. He slashed the sword downward and stumbled. The woman sounded a grunt, but remained agile as she danced round the attempt on her head. Blood curled around gravel stones in the driveway. He tried to lift his head to see the woman, but it only pivoted round his chest.

  “Useless,” Isaiah thought, and Peter shivered at the pang in that disapproval.

  Peter realised the blood came from his own leg. That downward swing had sliced his thigh. He loosened his grip on the sword and it bounced off the floor as he slipped to one knee and into the cold steel. His left leg had numbed and now sharpness ran through his throat. Peter fell to his side and spat blood, his hands on the blade which had sliced through his leg and pierced his lolling neck. He watched Isaiah pull from his body to leave a vacuum for pain to fill. The ghost cursed. Again, it called him useless.

  More screams. Peter would like to have joined their yells, but he could only gurgle and thrash. Shouts of “ghost” tolled in his ears.

  Margery bent over him and tutted.

  “Well, I never, you weren’t lying after all.”

  Corner Flag

  I arrive at the footy field early, like I always do. Set out the warm-up cones, make sure dog-shit won’t ruin the memory of a perfectly timed slide-tackle, and give myself time to contemplate the team-talk. I’m slow doing all three. An un-muffled motorbike assaults my ears – at eight in the morning – and last night’s email from a parent gurgles my stomach juices.

  Billy, the boys are playing all wrong, Jeff tells me. They should send the ball to big Trev every time.

  We’ve played seven games: won two, lost four and drawn one.

  I wrote back telling him the boys are young, and that eight year olds should learn the game – develop now for intense competition later. We dominate games, I tell him, falling only to the big lad up front all the other teams use incessantly.

  Aha, he writes back, my point exactly. The boys need to win. Confidence breeds development.

  It hurts that I consider his point. I know my lot will destroy all these teams when they get older. He has other parents on his side. The loud ones. And I know Jeff is just biding his time, waiting for that moment when he can tell them all about my past – that time he saw me glass an obnoxious prick in the face. The one who grabbed my girlfriend’s arse all night in The Crown pub. I knew I should have let Melanie handle it. She’d already slapped him across the chops, leaving her mark of rejection. The man-child wanted the last word, so he honked her boobs to his sound effect. Melanie, bless her, kneed him hard enough in the balls, surely, to prevent reproduction, but his lack of respect for her slap had me reaching for a glass. I shoved that thing rim-first into his face and watched the red waterfall.

  Nobody talked. The pub has that kind of punter. Jeff saw it all and kept his own counsel. Waited for me to slip up.

  The grey clouds which hang around Sheffield like the dull bloke at a party, pushes my mood further down. I wave the corner flags as if that could disperse them. As I plant one, the motorbike which soundtracks my thoughts turns the corner from behind the railings which divide the field from the footpath, and halts. The rider faces me and turns on his headlight, full beam. I turn my face away from the retina-slash, and mouth obscenities.

  I’m the adult here, stay cool. No need for violence. Working with these kids, including my son George, has kept me calm for the last year. I fear a relapse if I lose this team. I’m on probation with Melanie. I never hit her, I couldn’t. But she said she already sees me in George and she couldn’t stomach him replicating the things I’ve done in the past.

  The biker’s about fifteen, full of life, consumed by arrogance. Carries himself like he never had his arse spanked by either parent – if you could call them that. The rev makes me flinch. Nobody should hear such a thing at this time in the morning. A few curtains flutter, but windows stay clamped shut like their owners’ mouths. The kid knows his place. It’s at the top of this estate’s tree. I almost chomp my tongue. He accelerates onto the field and spins a spiral in the centre. He checks his shoulder as he rides away. I can see his eyes challenge me through the slit of his helmet.

  I head towards the middle like a trainee teacher, clueless about how to handle this. It’s no use, he’s gone. Fine. I go to the corner diagonal from the last flag I planted. The kid has ruined my equilibrium – I’m taking the long route here. As I stick the second flag in harder than necessary in Sheffield’s perma-slushed soil
, the thrummm of the Yamaha rattles my bones. I turn. He’s already in the centre-circle, creating trenches good enough for the First World War. I can see my boys twist ankles more than a magic sponge could handle.

  I pace towards him with as much intent as I can muster. Maybe a little cheeky banter can placate him. He stops his dirt-spins and faces me. Flashes his beams. My arm moves across my eyes to stop blindness. He revs as I open my mouth, silencing me. Coincidence. I open my mouth again, but another engine explosion acts as a gobstopper. Arsehole.

  “Look, could you please –”

  He revs and speeds past me. The backdraft tells me how close he came to sprawling me across the dirt. I swivel and the pulse in my hands throbs as I grip the two remaining corner flags tight. The rider spirals a couple more times, faces me again, and flashes another taunting beam. His engine growls, his back wheel spins a rut in the earth like a bull kicks the ground. He soars forward. Dares me to hold my ground. As he approaches, my right hand grips harder and I lift the pole, spike pointing ahead. I’m looking at the wheel spokes. I don’t care how old he is, I’m going to make him fly.

  He gets closer and I throw, just as I glance at his smug face.

  I aimed for the wheels … I aimed for the wheels.

  But, that look up … I hit him in the neck. The spike juts out the other end of his throat. His bike wobbles and slides until he’s off and the bike hits the railing.

  I swivel my neck, stunned. I see my boys. I see Jeff.

  I see my team slip away from me, like the blood – and the life – of this biker.

  And I know which is worse.

  The Cops

  “What have you got against me?”

  Brad leaned over to eye the young man and his fiery-eyed girlfriend. “Just checking you’re all okay, Mr McBride. This is a nice car.”

  “Isnt’t it? … I’m sure you wish you could afford it, right?”

  The girl wanted to say something. Her lips dammed a whole set of expletives, Brad could tell. She did well to hold her counsel. “Not my style. You take care, now.”

  “Yes, officer, I’ll take care not to get stopped for no reason again. Bye.”

  Brad rubbed his palms together as he watched McBride melt into Princeton traffic. He couldn’t figure out why he had stopped the boy, except for maybe he’d catch a glimpse of his recreational powders.

  ***

  Brad swept the change onto the tray, gave Donna a smile, a wink and a “thank you”, sucked in a deep breath, and took his seat opposite Gerry. Gerry grabbed his share, tucked in, and carried on from where he left off.

  “Man, it was brutal. He’d shot the man at least ten times. No need for it, unless he was trying to make a pattern on the man’s chest. I couldn’t figure any out. Just balls-out violence for the sake of it.”

  “Wow.” Brad rubbed at his nose.

  His “wow” had dipped its enthusiasm in the last couple of weeks. He’d not seen Gerry for years, since they worked together in Princeton. Brad had stayed as a town cop. Caricatured himself every day with donuts and coffee. Brad could only brag about how he protected the township’s traffic cones from crime while he watched workmen dig holes and climb up poles. His frustration had morphed to acceptance and a comfort in boredom.

  Since he bumped into Gerry at a crash on the outskirts of Princeton – two brothers had made their old parents childless – his frustration had taken root in the pit of his stomach. It had spread.

  “This is the stuff you see in my job, Brad. You should have come with me.”

  Brad sipped at his coffee, stared his pinched eyes at his former colleague, and grunted an “aha.”

  ***

  Brad met Gerry every other day now. At first, their meets rekindled an old friendship – which he now realized was only ever an acquaintanceship. Now he felt duty-bound to meet Gerry, to listen to his stories, to attempt to come up with some of his own. To compete.

  “… and so,” Gerry said days later, a hefty laugh at the crazy world around him, “she came out in just her bra and panties, pumping and firing that shotgun, hitting poor Juan in the shoulder.”

  “You were at that incident?”

  “Hell, yeah. Scary at first, but what a story afterwards …”

  Brad followed the wrinkle lines which stretched from the corner of Gerry’s eyes. Brad read action in every one. They stretched longer each day.

  Brad cleared his throat. “Well, some gimp hit a cone today … sent that thing flying. Craig, the AT&T guy, had to shift … I mean, he really had to dance to avoid that thing.”

  “That’s rough.” Gerry kept his eyes on the parking lot over the rim of his coffee cup.

  Brad paid the bill ten minutes after Gerry left. Worked himself up for STOP sign duty on the 206N out of Princeton. Some cable was getting laid. Unlike him. Some BMW driver might just get a ticket. If he was lucky.

  ***

  “Hi, honey.” Brad squinted through the windscreen despite his sunglasses. The phone burned against his ear from anticipation of her words.

  “Bradddd.”

  He hated that tone. It encompassed the longest sigh and a whole store of pity.

  “I just want to see how you are. Whether you thought things through?”

  She filled her silence with chores. He heard dishes clink and water run.

  “It’s just not working, Brad. It’s just … not.”

  He followed a red Lexus as if its color made the driver suspicious. “Give me a chance to fix what it is that’s not working. Let me work at it.”

  She halted whatever task she had. He imagined how she had a hand on a hip. “No, Brad. It’ll never work. You’re too passive. We have to move on.”

  She cut the call. The beat in his chest told him she’d already moved on. To another man. He turned the corner with the Lexus and switched on the lights.

  ***

  Brad slumped in the seat by the window, the same he always did. He greeted Donna with as much warmth as he could muster, and hoped Gerry didn’t have anything of interest to say this afternoon. He recalled the young rich punk last night who thought it his right to mouth off at an officer of the law when he stopped him. He rubbed at his thighs to lower his heart-rate at the memory.

  He checked his watch. Gerry always arrived late – acted like the high-school jock even now. Fucker. Watch, he’ll have been shot, and then I’ll have to listen to it. Then I’ll contribute something about traffic cones – Gerry’s trigger to get up and leave.

  He stared at the digital seconds on his wrist-watch as they made minutes. Shuffled his backside at how Gerry might have forgotten him, like he’d stood him up. Did other diners watch him from the corners of their eyes, over their newspapers? Just some dumb cone-guard nobody wants to talk to.

  As Donna brought his customary high-sugared coffee he clocked McBride pull into the parking lot, one hand on the wheel, dumb words – no doubt – spilling into his iPhone. He left his coffee to cool and John Wayned his casual way out of the diner. He leaned his hips against the railings at the top of the steps. Adjusted his holster.

  The twenty-year old pulled himself out of his car, and cut off his jibber-jabber when he clocked Brad. “Jesus fucking Christ.” The words scraped through his teeth. Spittle catapulted from every syllable. Warmed Brad up. Anticipated confrontation. Wished Gerry would get a move on. Brad frowned at muffled words, none of which came out of McBride’s mouth. The passenger door opened and the female voice, all Philadelphia, hit him hard.

  “You fucking corrupt piece of shit.” She leaned across her man’s seat to glare at Brad. Her dam had burst.

  “Chloe, let me handle this.” McBride gave Brad a weak tea smile.

  “No.” Her feet might leave marks in the tarmac the way she pounded round to her boyfriend’s side. “I’m sick of cops targeting you –”

  “Chloe –”

  “– for a thimble of weed. Makes me fucking sick …”

  Brad suppressed a smile and pulled his gun. Told them to get on th
e ground, put their hands on their heads, and shut the fuck up. He enjoyed how the woman’s outrage crumbled, crushed to fear. Saw narrowed eyes widen. Saw a story. Where had Gerry got to?

  He gave both of them a little kick to play to the crowd. Diners pressed faces to the window. Passers-by stopped to gawk. He searched the car, told Chloe to shut down her mumbled complaints. How about this for passive, Andrea?

  Nothing in the glove compartment, nothing in the center console. Blood pumped a drum solo in his ears. He watched the human shadow stretch across the interior. Made him smile.

  “Brad …?”

  Too fucking late. Brad had already spun in the seat. Had pulled the trigger twice. Gerry stumbled backwards and fell over McBride's and Chloe’s prone bodies.

  Now that’s a story, Gerry, that’s a goddamned story.

  Brother

  My younger brother dropped his bags in my hallway. “I’ll be here a couple of weeks tops, Barney.” He brushed past and left his luggage by my feet.

  “Sure.” My only reservation: Ely’s drug-dealing. I shrugged. Needed the rent money now I’d been fired.

  He soon relegated me to the basement. He took residence, and court, in my bedroom. Does all kinds of deals in there. Doesn’t want me to see.

  Sheila started as his customer, now she’s his accountant and lover. I hear their bedsprings most nights as I lie right beneath them. Wonder how the bedsprings manage it. Glad they do. Don’t want them coming through the floorboards to smother me with their horny sweat.

  He disrespects me every day, and I take it. He’s subtle. Tells me I could do better than this sweater I’m wearing. Tells me I could eat better cereal. Tells me I could do better with a woman in my life. I nod to placate him. Women make me feel lonely. Which includes Adele beneath this basement’s concrete floor.