by Matt Drabble
“You know I never realised that you were so interesting Rick,” Laurie said. “Why are you always so quiet and shy in school?”
Ricky could only blush and shrug in reply.
“You’ve got some hidden depths in there don’t you?” She said coyly. “You know if you’re interested there’s this thing tonight and I was wondering if…”
“Oh and you need some more help?”
“No I was wondering if you’d like to come with me, as a kind of date.”
Ricky stood there stunned trying to decide if he’d actually heard her correctly and that this wasn’t a dream. “Sure,” he heard himself say. The night was made all the more unreal as she took his hand as they walked.
Ricky checked his watch nervously; the time said that it was 8:37 pm but he had no idea when his curfew was as he had never been out at night before. The street was only a few blocks over from his own and it wouldn’t take him long to run home if he had to.
Laurie stopped outside of a house with loud music coming from within. Ricky recognised the property as that of Tommy Rabraido. Tommy was the school’s out and out sports star. He was captain of every team that the school had to offer and built like a teenage girl’s wet dream. He was handsome, muscular and carried himself with the sort of self-confidence that only a precious few possessed.
“We’re going here?” Ricky asked with shock and awe in equal measure.
“Of course dummy,” Laurie smiled warmly. “Tommy always has a party before a school dance. You must have been to one before?”
Ricky withered her with a stare. “I’m not exactly on the social calendar,” he said a little bitterly.
“You are just too cute,” Laurie grinned and pecked him on the cheek.
The door flew open and Tommy himself staggered out. His broad attractive face was flushed red and he carried a beer in his meaty fist. Ricky had never had any real interactions with Tommy other than ducking him at every opportunity. Tommy was the big dog at school, and big dogs tended to bite.
“Laurie, what the hell are you dragging there?” Tommy slurred. “You pick up a stray puppy on the way over?”
“Be nice Tommy,” Laurie warned. “This is Ricky, my date for the evening.”
“Well shit, come on in then,” Tommy grinned and bowed theatrically.
The music was loud and some kind of generic pop, but Ricky cared little. He was sitting on a plush couch having tasted his first beer. The alcohol was making his head swim which seemed to make Tommy and his friends laugh harder than ever. Ricky didn’t care; he was on the inside for the first time in his life and not looking in through the window. He had spoken to more people in the last hour or so than probably in the rest of his school career put together. He was shocked to find that most of the jocks seemed like decent enough guys, a little loud and crude perhaps but decent. Ricky’s mind was spinning with all the new names that he was learning and the beer that he was being handed. He had stopped checking his watch a while ago figuring that a little grounding was going to be worth it. A lot of his preconceptions were being challenged and he started to feel more than a little foolish at his presumptions of his peers. One look around the party showed him just what a diversity of kids were here. It seemed like every popular jock and pretty girl was socialising with someone less fortunate. He was assessing just what other lies the movies had fed him about high school when he saw Tommy carrying the ribbons. His heart sank at the sight as Tommy and his goons stumbled over themselves with undiluted glee in their eyes. Apparently Hollywood hadn’t been completely wrong.
The scene was all too depressingly familiar as Tommy and his friends handed out the sort of blue ribbons that were normally placed on pigs at a county fair. He had almost made it to the door before Tommy slapped his prize winning ribbon on him. Ricky had seen enough movies to know that all of the “cool” kids had picked someone as disgusting and ugly as he was, and that the worst date won a prize. He almost made it out of the door without crying, almost. The only one slither of gratitude that he had was that at least Laurie was nowhere to be seen for the added humiliation. He was only surprised that she wasn’t present for the award ceremony, she had won after all.
His eyes were blinded by tears of pity as he walked home, but those tears soon turned to ones of bitter bile and hatred. He hadn’t asked to be part of their world. He hadn’t stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong. He had been quite content staying below the radar and minding his own business, until she had dragged him in for some sick joke. In most of the movies the unpopular kids fought for acceptance, fought to challenge the accepted order. But he hadn’t challenged shit and they had trashed him anyway.
He stumbled up his path and into his house caring little that his father was going to hit the roof and probably then him at the lateness of the hour. The front door was unlocked but he barely noticed. The house was dark and for that he was glad. He climbed the stairs to his room hoping that his parents weren’t having an early but noisy night.
As he reached his door he heard the faint hiss and crackle of a needle on a record. His anger slipped up another gear at the thought of their prying eyes in his room. His anger rose further at the thought of his father’s clumsy hands upon his fragile vinyl.
He pushed open his door and recoiled at the smell that immediately struck him hard. He stared at the grisly scene as he stepped inside. What was left of his parents was splattered across the walls. Their headless bodies lay on the floor with a thick sludge of blood seeping from their stumps. There were splashes of red and pieces of flesh across his bed. Pink skin and grey matter had spewed across his posters in a rainbow of gore that stuck there in clumps.
He stood there as his mind rebelled at the sight. He looked over to the record player as the needle hissed and jumped at the end of the album. He didn’t have to look to know which record had been playing. His 13 year old mind found it easy to accept that Jimmy Blaze had reached out beyond the grave to shower the world with his anger and murderous intent. It was the ultimate middle finger, the ultimate fuck you to leave behind and live forever.
He walked through the crusty blood soaked carpet and stepped over his mother’s corpse. He stared down at the rotating record. He reached out and lifted the needle and placed it back in its cradle. Years of repressed fear and anger boiled beneath the surface, but close enough to heat the skin. His family was gone; they weren’t the greatest, but they were all he had in this stinking world. He had no friends except Lewis and he was just really a guy that sold stuff for money. Jimmy Blaze had it right, fuck the world and everyone in it, fuck them all.
He carefully lifted the record from the player and slipped it back into the brown sleeve marked with Lewis’s writing. He had a dance to go to.
Ricky set the record player up to the DJ’s equipment. He had found his father’s wallet and his mother’s purse at the house along with a jar full of rainy day money. He had a little over three hundred and it was enough to convince the DJ to play one track from the record.
Ricky had spent the night in his own bed amongst his parent’s remains. His sleep was surprisingly sound. His mother came to him and told him that she loved him and his father told him how proud he was. He woke without noticing the smell and felt strangely calm. As he showered he chatted to his parents who had become unexpectedly agreeable and he wondered more than once if this was what going insane felt like. If it was, it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation.
The dance was in full swing and Ricky had kept a low profile. The last thing that he wanted was to converse with anyone who might have been at the party last night. As far as he was concerned the sheep were going to lay down with the wolves tonight and it mattered little on which side you fell. The tormenters deserved their fate and the tormented deserved their escape.
He checked his watch and saw that the hour approached fast. The DJ had given him an eleven o’clock slot at the end of the night figuring that he didn’t care if anyone complained. The DJ had a heavy duty set of headphones that he
used to isolate the music above the crowd noise. Ricky had borrowed them hoping that they would protect him from the record. It wasn’t that he cared much about his own life; it was just that he wanted to watch first.
Despite trying to avoid everyone, Laurie had seen him when he’d entered the school and chased him down the corridor. She had grabbed him hard and tried to talk but he had shaken her off by slipping out of his jacket and heading into the boy’s bathroom. He had waited until she was gone before going back out and retrieving his jacket. The last thing that he wanted was to listen to anymore of her lies.
The clock clicked to 11 and the DJ took off his earphones and gave Ricky a nod. His hands were steady and his pulse was slow as his teed up the record. He looked out over a sea of faces that turned in puzzlement as their music stopped and the gymnasium fell silent.
Ricky felt the crackle of the record begin to play as he unplugged the earphones and slipped them on. He could see his classmate’s faces twist into boos as the music started. Some of those drinking the spiked punch began clumsily throwing their paper cups at the stage, but the angry faces soon began to contort into strange shapes of pain and confusion. Ricky could only hear a low rumble from the sound system. He put his hand to his nose and saw that his fingers came away slick with blood, but those in the crowd weren’t so lucky. Ricky stared on in amazement as the audience started to shake and jerk as if in some new dance craze. Blood spurted from eyes and ears in crimson mists and people began vomiting their guts up. Ricky could just make out quiet pops on the dance floor and he turned to see heads swelling and exploding. From his distance it was all a little disappointing, movie makeup may not have been realistic, but it definitely looked better than the real thing. He smiled coldly as Tommy Rabraido’s head exploded showering his date before she followed suit. He turned away as the last head popped, glad that he hadn’t spotted Laurie out there.
He lifted the needle from the record and wondered what to do next. The gymnasium was full of the dead and the smell was bad as bladders and bowels had evacuated in protest. Suddenly Ricky felt a chill seep into his bones and he slipped his hands into his pocket. He felt something in one of them and drew out a folded piece of paper. On closer examination it was a note from Laurie. She must have put it in his pocket when he was hiding from her in the bathroom. He didn’t want to read anything that she had to say, but he opened it all the same.
In short it was an apology that he didn’t want to believe. Laurie protested that she had known nothing about Tommy’s cruel party prank and that she had looked desperately to find him and explained after he’d left. Ricky wanted to laugh in her face, or at least what was left of it. He wanted to screw the note up and burn it for her lies, but he did believe it nevertheless. She had nothing to gain after the party and should have been reveling in her success if she had brought him there for humiliation purposes.
He looked out across the ocean of the dead; classmates and chaperone teachers lay in splattered pieces. He didn’t have the heart or the stomach to walk out there and find her. Instead he returned the needle to the start of the record and plugged the headphones into the system. He turned the volume control up to full blast and waited.
Lewis closed the “Vintage Vagrants” door and locked up behind him. It was with a heavy heart that he started to walk to his car. The town had damn near lost its mind after the massacre at the school. The police were still at a loss to explain just what the hell had happened up there. Lewis had a friend on the force that had filled him with the gory details. Apparently all the kids looked like they’d had their heads blown off at close range with a shotgun, yet there were no traces of any weapon being used. Young Ricky had been found at the scene and his parents had suffered the same fate in their home. It was a tragic and heartbreaking scene and Lewis was glad to be leaving town. His police friend had also managed to return his property thankfully due to the fact that he had written it on the sleeve. The beyond rare record was now in the hands of the guy from LA who had flown out especially after hearing about the deaths at the high school and the fact that the record had apparently been playing at the time. The guy had been so desperate that the negotiations had been short and sweet. Lewis had been glad to get rid of the thing and the guy had written out a check with more zeros than there was almost room for on the piece of paper.
Lewis turned the radio on and was bombarded with yet another promo for the night’s upcoming main event. The lost Jimmy Blaze record was going to be played in its entirety in less than an hour’s time now. The station was national and the signal went coast to coast. The industry was predicting that millions of radios would be tuned in to hear the infamous record played.
Lewis pulled out and started his long journey away from this town. He didn’t intend to listen to the album as the vibes were just too damn weird. He had been driving for a couple of hours on the deserted highway before his curiosity got the best of him. He reached out and hit the dial; he figured that he could spare a couple of minutes to give it a listen. He had a long way to go and a lot of time to kill and after all, what was the worst that could happen?
tale 4.
“whose face is this anyway?”
“You’re crazy,” Melanie exclaimed, regretting her tone immediately as Donnie’s fists curled into tight bunches. “I mean, it’ll never work,” she tried with a more appeasing tone.
Donnie leaned across the car with casual anger. The slap wasn’t hard but the effect was always the same. Donnie was an expert at making a point without leaving a mark.
“You don’t ever correct me, or did you forget that?” Donnie smiled unpleasantly. “Do we need to have another lesson in manners?”
“No Donnie, no of course not baby,” Melanie whined, wringing her hands.
Donnie smiled inwardly as well as outwardly. He’d got this one trained good and fast. No mouthy cow was ever going to tell him he was crazy, not while he had the strength to lift a hand to the problem.
He was a large man of generous girth. His face was pocked marked through a bout of childhood measles that he had been unable to stop picking at. His eyes were a cloudy dull grey that only sparkled with cruelty. He was a tall and broad man who had turned a little softer as he grew older. Tight toned muscles were now leaning towards wobbling jelly lumps but he could still look good enough when he needed to. But his hair was still his pride and joy, long lustrous waves of chestnut unencumbered by the graying of age. He spent hours in front of the mirror brushing his mane in the mirror feeling like an Adonis. His biggest strength had always been his ability to spot weakness in others, especially women; for whatever reason he had been blessed with a vulnerability radar that never failed. Give him a crowded room and he could always pick the blooming rose with Daddy issues.
“It’ll work I tell you,” he said soothingly. He had no interest in her feelings, but he did still need her help for the plan to work. “It’ll work perfectly and then it’s off to the good life for you and me. Sandy beaches and little umbrella drinks. You remember Ibiza, that holiday we took a few years back? You remember how much fun we had? Well every day is going to be like that from now on. Every day will be a holiday, a perfect paradise.”
“If you’re sure,” Melanie conceded with a lowered gaze.
“Good girl,” Donnie said calmingly as he took her arm, enjoying the way that she flinched even under his softest of touches.
Melanie was his wife of almost 20 years now. Whilst his own softening build was a matter of supreme silence, her widening hips were often the topic of much derision. She was a mousy woman who had once been a beauty, but 20 years of marriage to him had dulled her once bright surfaces.
They lived in perpetual debt and misery. Donnie’s tastes ran to the expensive and his love of gambling had dragged them under further. He owed money to just about every bookie in the city and some of the more aggressive ones were starting to come knocking. Most nights he cursed his rotten luck and his stinking life. There was a whole world out there to be sipped and tast
ed. It was a world of beautiful women and glorious sunsets on exotic beaches. The only problem was that his appetites far outweighed his wallet.
Donnie was not an intelligent man by nature, but even the dullest of creatures were still capable of flashes of genius once in a while. His had come after reading a news article a few years ago about a man who had faked his own death in a boating accident. His wife had claimed on the insurance and they had lived happily in South America for several years until the man had been stupid enough to get himself photographed. The small seed had been planted in Donnie’s mind that day and had grown over the years. The plan was sound enough as long as you had the patience for the long game and an accomplice that you could trust. One other crucial mistake that the other guy had made it would seem, was that he hadn’t taken steps to alter his appearance and been undone by a simple photograph.
Donnie had begged, bullied and borrowed every penny that he could get his hands on and taken out the largest life insurance policy that he could manage. Over the years, despite their fading fortunes the one payment that he never missed was the insurance policy. For eight long years he had waited and planned and the time was fast approaching. He had never trusted Melanie with the plan until now; the last thing he wanted was for her to have eight years to find a little courage with which to oppose him.
Despite his fading looks and spreading waistline he still had the ability to attract female company on a Friday night, although the bars had become dimmer and the women had become shadows of the roses that he had once attracted in his youth.
The phone rang in his pocket and he snatched it out irritably. This particular number was only held by one woman. He sent the call to voicemail with a vicious jab of his finger. Sara knew better than to call him at this time and he didn’t want to answer for fear of losing his temper. He could tell his wife anything about the call and she wouldn’t question him. But Sara required kid glove handling. She was a delicate flower and easily upset, but she was crucial to his plan.