by Gina Ranalli
Mother Puncher
Gina Ranalli
Also by Gina Ranalli
Novels
Chemical Gardens
Wall of Kiss
Suicide Girls in the Afterlife
House of Fallen Trees
Swarm of Flying Eyeballs
Sky Tongues
Praise the Dead
Dark Surge
Peppermint Twist (forthcoming)
Still Life with Vibrator (forthcoming)
Collections
13 Thorns (with Gus Fink)
Winner of the Wonderland Award
Published by Afterbirth Books
PO Box 6068
Lynnwood, WA 98036
www.afterbirthbooks.com
Originally published in trade paperback by Afterbirth Books (2008)
Suicide Girls in the Afterlife
ISBN-10: 1-933929-17-0
Copyright © 2008 by Gina Ranalli. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction.
Cover art and design copyright ©2008 by Ed Riggs
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author or publisher.
all lies and jest...
1
He punched her in the face as hard as he could.
Normally, he wouldn’t have hit any woman so hard, but she’d pissed him off, shooting him in the eyes with that pepper spray. Someone must have smuggled it in for her and the second he’d gotten within arms-length—BAM—he was screaming in pain, blinded and, without thinking about it, he stepped forward and swung.
It was amazing he’d connected at all.
But he’d had, clocking her one in the nose and over the din of his own cries, he was pretty sure he’d heard her let out a yelp. He also knew how it felt to break a nose. He’d done it countless times. He knew exactly how it felt when the bones beneath someone’s skin shifted, even just a fraction. His knuckles were super-sensitive to such things, having experienced this nearly ever day since he was fourteen.
Now, he was forty and though he only punched a few people per day, he’d never lost that magic touch in his knuckles.
Once his fist connected, he’d stumbled backwards, clawing at his stinging eyes with both meaty fists. “You bitch! I can’t believe you sprayed me!”
“You broke my fucking nose!” the woman screamed from her hospital bed. “I’m bleeding!”
“I’m just doing my job lady,” Ed Means told her, still trying to clear his vision. Tears ran down his cheeks, giving him the appearance of a huge, sobbing man. Anyone who didn’t know him would probably think he looked shockingly like that big dude from Of Mice and Men. The sensitive retard who was always crying and didn’t know his own strength.
But Ed knew his own strength alright. Had known it since he was kid in the school yard. Throwing punches was something that came as naturally to him as breathing. He knew from very early on that he would become a boxer and that’s exactly what he did, living out his glory days for nearly twenty years, from 18 to 38 when he’d caught one too many concussions and the federation snapped his license away.
Ed hadn’t taken it well. Most guys got another ten years in the ring and he remained bitter about having to take a menial job as a Mother Puncher in the local hospital.
He supposed it was better than doing some other crap work like driving a truck or working as a mechanic, but still. He punched people for a living. For the most part, innocent people, woman who had just given birth to babies. He would have felt more comfortable hitting the fathers, but they more often than not got the hell out of there and let their wives and girlfriends take the heat alone. Little weasels. Ed loved the days when one of them was “brave” enough or “man” enough to stick by his woman’s side and take one in the chin for their mistake, assuming the pregnancy was a mistake, which it sometimes was, but not always.
Sometimes people just took it into their heads that they wanted a brat and no amount of dissuasion was going to talk them out of it.
Some of them just flat out didn’t care that it was strongly discouraged by the government. Breeding hadn’t been a popular thing to do for nearly three decades now. The world was so overcrowded that the government decided it was time they took control of the situation. They bought up every last insurance company and now they were the insurance company and they refused to pay for pregnancies. Once a kid was born, the family was pretty much good to go, as long as they could prove they’d had the kid in a hospital. Of course having the brat in a hospital didn’t mean much. Just that the woman and kid were both safe and clean and the delivery went off without a hitch. Usually anyway. Barring complications.
And once the baby was born…that’s when Ed came in. His job was to clock the mothers a good one, one they wouldn’t forget. Discourage them from doing something so stupid as getting pregnant again. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Sometimes Ed had to punch the same woman twice a year. He would swear, some of them even liked it, looked forward to it.
But today, this woman was most definitely not looking forward to it.
“What kind of a man are you?” she screeched from her bed. “Punching women for a living?”
Ed ignored her. He’d heard it all before and it had long ago ceased to bruise his masculinity. “You know the rules, lady,” he muttered still rubbing the pepper spray out of his eyes. “You’re the one who got knocked up, not me.”
“You son-of-a-bitch! If my husband was here…” She trailed off, as if it had just occurred to her that he husband wasn’t here and just where the hell was he? He deserved a punch in the face just as much as she did. Hell, probably more so since it was him who wanted to do the nasty that cold night last January. She hadn’t even wanted to do it! “Where the hell is my husband anyway?” she demanded, as if Ed would know. As if he was hiding the weasel away somewhere.
“Lady, I don’t know. He’s probably hiding in the cafeteria. That’s where they usually go when once the babies pop out. They know I’ll be in here any minute and they take off with their tails between their yellow fucking legs.”
Big Ed Means spoke the truth. If it was up to him, he’d charge around the whole hospital looking for the little prick who would let his wife take a punch while his hid away in the janitors closet or some shit, waiting for Ed to cruise by, waiting until it was safe to play the loving, supportive husband again.
Ed hated those guys. He thought there should be a law that the couple can’t leave with the brat until both parents got a good sock in the nose for being so stupid as to bring another mouth into this world.
Of course, that would be pretty hard to do, since sometimes the mother either didn’t know who the father was or the guy was such a loser that he refused responsibility for the kid.
Yeah, if Ed had his way, those guys would get not one but two shots in the face and he wouldn’t go easy on them either.
One of the reasons the men often hid, however, was that they knew Ed from his boxing days. Knew he had once been a heavyweight contender and had KO’d a lot of famous boxers at one time or another.
The good old days.
But they were over now and here he was, his vision blurry but finally returning little by little, and the first thing he was able to see was a pissed-off woman with a bloody face glaring at him and shouting obscenities.
Ed stumbled his way into the bathroom to rinse his eyes with water. Goddammit. He’d had a lot of stunts pulled on him in the last two years as the Mother Puncher but this was the first time someone had managed to nail him with pepper spray. He sure hoped it would be the last.
Once he had his eyes rinsed well enough to see without squinting, he returned to the new mother, taking a digital camera
out of his jacket pocket. “Okay, lady, smile for the camera.”
“Are you crazy? I’m calling for security!”
He fumbled with the camera, trying to put it into focus. “Go ahead and call them,” he said. “They won’t come. This is part of your hospital stay.”
“Oh yeah? Getting punched by a fucking bully in a suit or having him take a picture of the damage he’s done? Is this one of those sick trophy things? Like what serial killers do?”
Sighing, he said, “No, it’s for the complimentary photo album the hospital provides. This is the first picture they glue down inside it.”
Sandy the maternity nurse entered the room then, carrying a squirming bundle of joy wrapped in a blue blanket. “Here you are, Mrs. Obsenity. Here’s your little Jason.” She handed the baby over to the mother, oblivious to the fact that the woman now had a broken nose and was bleeding all over her hospital johnnie.
“Where’s big Jason,” Mrs. Obsenity demanded. “Where the fuck is he?”
Sandy and Ed exchanged a glance, and then Sandy shrugged.
“Perfect,” Ed said, trying to change the subject. “I bet you’d much rather have little…uh…Jason in the picture with you, huh? Commemorating this day together?”
Before the woman could respond, Ed snapped the picture. When it was too late, the woman stopped scowling and gave Ed a big smile. “Cheese.” She held the baby aloft, making sure Ed got him in the picture too.
Ed sighed and took another pic, though he wasn’t really supposed to; the hospital paid for the camera and wanted it to last. They constantly reminded Ed that the more photos he took, the shorter the camera’s lifespan would be.
“There you go,” he said. “Congratulations on your new baby boy.”
This last statement was policy. He was supposed to smile when he delivered the line and if possible, shake the hands of the parents and tap the kid gently on the head.
Those last things seldom happened, but he always said his line, without fail.
He turned to exit the room, whispering to Sandy as he passed. “She has a canister of pepper spray. I want to know how she got it in here.”
“The husband?” Sandy whispered back.
Ed shook his head. “Well, he’s not around now, but I suppose it’s possible. Did you see him at all?”
“No.” Sandy glanced warily at the woman with her new son. “Maybe she brought it in herself. You know….down there.”
The thought made Ed cringe. “Whatever. Just be careful. I’m gonna go get a cup of coffee. You know when the next one is due?”
Sandy consulted her watch. “Probably around four hours. You have plenty of time.”
“Thank fucking God.” With that he left the room, hoping Sandy would have better luck with the crazy bitch than he had.
2
Ed exited the hospital through the back in an attempt to avoid the picketers and Jesus freaks that were a constant staple out front. Some people didn’t take too kindly to the government’s laws these days, still harboring the belief that whoever wanted to have a baby should be allowed to and have the hospital pay for it to boot.
Ed thought they were selfish scum, knowing the state of the world and still insisting that they should be able to breed as much as they wanted. Losers.
He climbed inside his truck, a jet-black Ford Trinidad that he kept in mint condition, slammed and locked the door and started the engine. Checking his eyes in the rearview, he saw they were still red-rimmed and puffy. “That bitch,” he huffed under his breath. “Just doing my job.”
He drove out of the hospital lot and headed home. Normally, he would have just grabbed a cup of coffee from the cafeteria but since he had four hours to kill, he figured he might as well go home and relax for a while. If the baby came sooner, the hospital staff would just call him on his cell and he’d high-tail it back there in no time at all.
Flipping on the radio, he heard a familiar jingle and then a soothing woman’s voice say, “Envision: It’s a lifestyle.” Then a country tune started and Ed drummed his fingers against the steering wheel in time to the music. He smiled a little in spite of the crummy day he’d had so far.
Envision was a large and beautiful gated community where no children were allowed and it was also where Ed happened to live with Ash, his wife of ten years.
He looked forward to getting there. He loved the peacefulness of the place and even though it was expensive, he thought it was worth it. In the ads, the owners promoted the place as being “without screaming or crying, without toys or laughter, Envision is the perfect place to live.”
Ed knew they were right. He’d never wanted children and wanted them even less now that he saw the kinds of boneheads that did want them. In his mind, you had to be pretty stupid to want kids in this day and age. Not to mention selfish.
Dumb asses.
He approached the gatehouse at the front of Envision and the guard waved him through, raising the gate with barely a glance. Ed drove straight to his house, exactly like all the others.
Ash’s car was in the driveway and he pulled the Trinidad in behind it, climbing out and stretching, regarding the day with a mixture of suspicion and hopefulness. It was only 10:30 am, still plenty of time for the day to improve. He walked along the flagstone path to his front door and entered the house, calling for his wife.
He found her in the computer room, chain-smoking, a cup of coffee that was almost certainly cold near her hand .
“Hey, Ash,” he said from the doorway.
“Ed. What are you doing here?” This without taking her eyes from the computer screen.
“Got a few hours before the next brat is due. You in a chat room?” It was a foolish question. Ash was always in a chat room.
“Yep. Coffee should still be warm.”
“Thanks.” He hesitated, thinking he should say something else, but when he couldn’t think of anything, he turned and walked off towards the kitchen, leaving her to her online friends.
Ash was wrong. The coffee wasn’t still warm, but Ed poured himself a mug anyway and heated it in the microwave. He carried the steaming cup into the living room, sat down in his favorite recliner and switched on the tube. His vision was still slightly blurry but the sting was now being drowned out by the ache in his right hand. The ache was a familiar one, though not constant. Not yet. But soon enough, Ed knew it would be. You could only punch so many people before your bones started protesting.
He held his coffee in his left hand and gave his right an occasional shake, wondering if he should pop a few ibuprofen before the ache really began to scream at him.
Keeping his eye on the clock, he drank his coffee and watched afternoon crap on TV.
Eventually, Ash emerged from the computer room and Ed noticed she was still wearing her bathrobe and slippers. He watched his wife pass by him with barely a nod and wondered what had happened to the woman he’d married.
Ash worked in a gas station/convenience store combo part-time, had long dry black hair that was in a constant state of disarray, smoked and drank too much and was growing thicker through her mid-section with every passing year.
And she had a temper. The temper that had once seemed so sexy to Ed when they first met was no longer attractive in any way. When she was drunk—which was every night she didn’t have to work—she would often get surly and sarcastic, sometimes pitching fits, screaming and throwing things at Ed. It was during these times that Ed prayed for a baby to be born so he could leave and go punch someone.
He tried not to take his frustrations with his wife out on the mothers at the hospital, and for the most part he succeeded. But every so often, when one of the women was particularly obnoxious or tried to fight with him or made him chase them around the hospital, he would lose it and hit her a little too hard. He was always sorry afterwards, and made it a point to tell them so, but sometimes it was difficult not to haul off and knock their damn blocks off.
Ed knew it was the same for other Mother Punchers and suspected that
the mothers he worked with were among the luckiest mothers of all. Some guys just really and truly hated women and sometimes that was their sole purpose for even applying for the job. So they could clock women all day. Those kinds of guys, Ed wanted to clock himself and would have if given the chance.
The only time Ed actually felt joy from his job when was he found some weasely father hiding under the bed or in the john, letting his wife take a punch that he deserved just as much as she did.
Fuck those guys, Ed thought, sipping his coffee. He hoped there would be a father around when he got back to the hospital later.
“Why are you home?” Ash asked, coming into the living room.
“I told you, I have a few hours until the next kid comes.”
“Oh.” She glanced around the room, her dark eyes vacant. Ed wondered if she’d put anything in her morning coffee, though he doubted it. Ash was an alcoholic—there was no denying that—but she preferred wine to the hard stuff. Wine that came in a box. That was her drink, her constant evening companion.
She reached into her robe and brought out a pack of Virginia Slims, shaking one out and sticking it between her chapped lips. “Whatcha watching?”
“Ash, don’t light that cigarette in here.” Ed hated that his wife smoked and was forever reminding her to do it outside, which she did probably less than half the time he was home and never when he wasn’t.
“This is my house too!” she barked at him. “I pay for it just as much as you do.”
“Yeah, but these are my lungs and my heart. Smoke outside, please.”
Ash rolled her eyes and shuffled out of the room. He heard the slider in the kitchen open and close and he felt a sense of relief wash over him. He didn’t feel like getting into it with her today. He just wanted to drink his coffee in peace, stretch out in his own chair and relax before he had to go back to work.