by R. P. Lester
There was the go-to “bucket of sewage sitting on a slightly open door waiting for Douglas to enter,” the standard “kick to the balls when Douglas rounded a corner,” or my personal favorite, “drag Douglas to the locker room with a plastic bag taped over his head and slam his dick with a toilet lid.”
Any one has proven effective in academia for centuries.
Ruination of this prick required a different sort of blow, however, one that would permanently teach him respect. He had been a stain on the mattress for way too long and it was time to scrub him clean. In the end, his chosen flop was easy to formulate, for I had a finger on the pulse of his perversions.
I knew that Douglas was a peeping Tom.
***
Lunchtime found Douglas on his perch. There was a women's bathroom located by the basketball courts nestled in a corner of school property. A thicket of blackberry bushes behind the structure had made it an unappealing hangout for the masses.
This was his theater.
Access to the ladder was easy. He had caught Mrs. Suckston hoovering the janitor a few weeks prior and was given a key to the work closets in exchange for silence (my high school was ran by Pee Wee Herman).
The bathrooms were built like the ones you’d find at a camp or an interstate rest stop. The wall stopped a few inches short of the ceiling and he peered over the edge. Leering at the girls from atop his metal stilts, Douglas unbuckled his jeans and let them fall to his knees. The faint whimpers of pleasure soon eeked from his throat as he fingered his skinflute, feverishly pumping for that sticky payoff. His load was coming any time now, and the wetter a girl’s fart, the closer his eruption:
Almost there.....Oh God.....yes.....yes!.....FUUUUUCK!
I jettisoned from my hiding spot in the bushes, ramming the ladder like a bull and slamming Douglas into the wall so hard they both ricocheted downward in a majestic arch. He crash-landed and cried like a sex offender on his first night in jail, squealing as his constituency raced over from the main building to see their president with his pants around his ankles. Murmurs began circulating about his appearance as cheerleaders from the bathroom circled him like buzzards:
“What were you doing here, Douglas?”
“Why were you on top of that ladder, Douglas?”
“Why is your dick out of your pants, Douglas?!!”
Good luck explaining that, cocksmoker.
Having tied a knot in his beatfest, I fired up a Newport and began trekking to the main building. That’s when I heard a teacher scream the words that stopped me in my tracks:
“Oh my God! He cut his finger off!”
I spun around and told that bitch that liars go to Hell. I didn’t want to believe her. But her statement was confirmed when I saw blood pouring from the stump where his finger used to live.
This wasn’t in my blueprints.
A fucking psychic couldn’t have seen it coming: Douglas fell in such harmony that he was still clutching a ladder leg with his right hand. It snapped shut when he landed and cut off his goddamn pinky finger like a deli slicer! Cheerleaders passed out from the sight of his lone digit on the ground. My exhilaration plummeted with his erection. He flopped with agony as someone rushed to the principal’s office to call for an ambulance.
And my father.
***
I dove through the Vadgastank’s rose bushes with military precision. The thorns were of minor irritation, though their new razor wire ripped into my flesh like a scythe. Shaking free of the snags, I shot up and jerked my head this way and that. A heavy presence loomed on my neck. I slowly turned around expecting the hands of madness to encircle me.
It was my own shadow.
I gathered my nerves and blurred through Mrs. Vadgastank’s backyard, jumping her topless body as she tanned by the pool. Whizzing over her busty figure, I proffered sexy salutations:
“Hello, Saggy Tits!” The plastic surgeon hadn't done shit for those milkflaps.
There was no time to lose. My life hung in the balance and the string was unraveling.
What’s gonna happen to my weed when I die? Kind bud is expensive. I can't just let that shit go to was-
I couldn't afford to think about that. I had to keep running.
Running kept me alive.
Running kept me safe.
The Hellhound was close at hand.
***
My father picked me up from school after getting the phone call he’d always dreamed of—the one informing him that I was responsible for maiming another student and that the heft of my actions had failed to impress.
A pervert got his finger amputated as he spied on chicks during the most private activity known to man. I couldn’t even shit concern, much less fake it.
Of course, Pops couldn’t grasp this logic. He couldn't view my courageous act for what it was: a heroic gesture that stifled a loose sexual cannon and quenched my thirst for vengeance. In his mind, I’d hoisted unprovoked violence on another human being.
He parked his new Cadillac in the driveway and killed the engine. We shared an uneasy quiet as the shiny dice dangling from his rearview mirror shot dancing beams of light on the upholstery. I’d always wondered what a “deafening silence” sounded like. I found it to be thunderous.
After a few pensive moments, he turned to me and said in a guttural voice, “Just run.”
Who was I to argue with such sound advice?
***
Pops was gaining as I hauled ass toward the Quieftons’ gazebo. Standing in their pagoda bent over with my hands on my knees, I panted and marveled at his endurance.
"Motherfucker!" I gasped out loud. "How can a three-hundred-pound smoker move so fast?!" It seemed that I had underestimated him.
As I cowered in the Quieftons’ summer house, I quickly tallied my odds and concocted a plausible theorem: Pops was older and more accepting of failure, whereas I was young and motivated to lose my virginity someday.
Survival was possible.
I heard him approaching with quaking steps and hurled over the railing, straight into Mr. Quiefton’s attack dogs that he used in his security business. My Adidas hit the dirt and I looked up to find four hungry Rottweilers staring back at me in a dog pen only twenty feet in diameter. At least I think that was the breed. The shoulder width and muscle structure gave the appearance of two-thirds Rottweiler and one-thirds holy shiiiiiiiit! Their naps had been interrupted, the rumbles coming from their throats revealing immense displeasure with my intrusion. Had I known there were bloodthirsty canines blocking my escape route, I would’ve let my father’s insanity take its course. They growled and bared fangs, waiting for me to run so they could snack on my nuts. Giving up seemed like my only option. I reconciled myself to becoming Alpo.
Just when I felt the last rays of my sun sinking below the treeline forever, I spotted a rolled-up newspaper a couple of feet from me that’d been hurled into their backyard because the paperboy threw like a bitch. I knelt down and snatched it up, hoping to have some defense when the land sharks pounced.
I quickly discovered that those “ferocious attack dogs” Mr. Quiefton had bragged about for so many years were a bunch of dyed-in-the-wool pussies, man.
Sometime after this incident, I found out that Mr. Quiefton had trained them with something as unsophisticated as Rolling Stone magazine. They couldn’t tell the difference between that and an ordinary newspaper. They instantly heeled, bowing their enormous heads to the soil, whimpering and lying on their bellies with total submission. After the realization that I wasn’t going to die a humiliating death—not right then anyway—I crawfished toward the gate with the newsrag still clutched in my sweaty hand. I flipped the latch on the other side, tiptoeing across the threshold while keeping my bulging eyes focused on them, locking it when I was safe.
***
I emerged from Mrs. Quiefton’s trimmed hedges and viewed my surroundings like a paranoid squirrel. Their house was a couple blocks over from ours. I didn’t see my father’s frothing chops a
nywhere. The only notable activities were some children playing basketball in a driveway across the street, and Walford, the twelve-year old special kid, pissing on a fire hydrant. Everything appeared to be normal.
Racking my brain for a plan, I concluded that the best course of action was to give Pops some time to process the day’s information.
My plan necessitated that I avoid him like the plague.
I decided to double back and grab my bike that I’d bypassed during my dash from the Caddy. I had left it lying in our backyard due to the not-insignificant issue of Pops trying to tear me a new asshole. As I walked, I stayed ever-vigilant for an angry wad of malice and navy slacks to come lunging at me from the bushes of a neighbor’s front yard. The fact I was in the middle of the street in broad daylight didn’t make me feel any safer.
Pops will strangle you on the pitcher’s mound of Yankee Stadium during the World Series. He doesn’t give a shit.
I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary when I approached our front lawn. Standing on the street by the mailbox, I viewed the telltale signs of a man in the throes of acute psychosis. Pops was more pissed at me than I’d realized; he’d left behind his briefcase and fedora.
He never went anywhere without those.
I crept to the gate flanking the left side of our house. Nothing in the backyard except our brick storage shed and Fred asleep on his air mattress. I picked up my Beach Cruiser, rolling the balloon tires along the grass back to the front yard, peeking around the corner as I did so.
Still, nothing.
I heard birds chirping, kids laughing, and the groans of Mrs. Vadgastank’s husband from next door as she gave him a blowjob beside the pool. Typical, run-of-the-mill stuff. I gradually began to relax, a warm sense of tranquility enveloping me like fat titties from a hot shower. Walking through our manicured lawn to the street, I pondered my father’s reaction. A piece of me began to see his side of things.
“I think it’s going to be okay,” I said out loud. “Pops just needs to let his anger subside. After all, how would I feel if I had gotten a phone call like that about my kid? He was shocked. That’s it.”
The hunt was over. My life was not going to be snuffed out like a Pall Mall in a smoky bar. I was going to live and occasionally have women deny my sexual advances. Everything was looking up.
I came to the curb and placed two wheels on the street. Grinning with confidence, I began pedaling to my friend Robbie's house on the other side of the neighborhood. I wanted to smoke a bowl and I wasn’t going inside to retrieve my stash. Pops could’ve been in the living room eating a plate of Valium with a side of bottle. If you think I was going to fuck up that tranquilizer, well you’re just-
CRAAAAAAAAAAASH!
See? This is why I don’t get happy about shit prematurely.
***
Pops exploded through the wooden fence on the four-wheeler we kept in the brick shed, screaming like a madman with his eyes billowing out of his skull and holding a riding crop. Splintered pickets blew everywhere as he raced toward me like a rabid jockey on his metal steed.
Where in the hell he got a riding crop still eludes me to this day.
His slacks were still in place, but he was wearing only a white undershirt, his pinstripe dress shirt having been removed and wrapped around his head like a nomad’s turban in the Mojave. Before he reached the curb, he made a sharp turn into the middle of the yard and cut donuts the size of crop circles, screaming, “WOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” so loud I could hear it over the engine.
I stood slack-jawed, straddling my bike and unable to discern if what I was seeing was real or the result of way too much LSD the week before. My father solved this riddle by yelling, “YOU BETTER RUN, ASSHOLE! THAT SICK FUCK’S MOTHER JUST CALLED AND TOLD ME I’M RESPONSIBLE FOR THE HOSPITAL BILL, OR HIS FATHER’S GONNA SUE! YOU BETTER CARRY YO’ ASS WHILE YOU STILL HAVE AN ASS TO CARRY! WOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
It was like a scene from Full House if Bob Saget had been a deranged psychopath.
I took off down the street as neighbors watched from their doorsteps, nodding to themselves, saying, “Yep, he’s finally going to kill him.”
Hearing Pops rev the engine made me pedal faster than I ever had before, pumping my legs like pistons in a well-oiled machine. He released the brake and shot out of the yard, laughing sadistically as he jumped the curb and tore into the street with total disregard for the car he’d ran off the road. He was in hot pursuit. My heart was beating like a meth head who’d lost his straw. Occasionally, he'd speed up and close the distance between us, forcing me to regret that time I passed on helping Mrs. Vadgastank trim her “rug.”
Pops would accelerate his chariot, blowing the hot winds of death on my neck with devilish delight, only to retreat at the last instant. He was toying with me in the same way jaguars toy with their antelope, mocking me, throwing his head back in maniacal laughter when the front winch ground against my tire with a nauseating eeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzz!
We lapped around the neighborhood. Whenever I thought I’d shaken him, he would resume his previous position five feet from my rear tire. We'd ridden passed Robbie's house twice. On the third revolution, he was standing outside shouting words of encouragement:
“Ditch the bike, Innis! Let him graze you! He just wants to cripple you, not kill you!” (I ask you, good people, what kind of fucking advice was that?)
At least Robbie was rooting for me. Every time I passed Walford, he just stood there with a stupid look on his face and his retarded dick in his hand. That unhelpful little bastard!
It became evident that this would be a homicide if I continued relying on a Beach Cruiser for survival; I was on a horse carriage and Pops was driving a rocket. Had I made him battle for that beating anymore, my life would surely be in question. I began to entertain Robbie’s advice of doing a tuck-and-roll. Pops would beat me unrecognizable, but at that point, anything was better than dying without life’s milestones under my belt.
I flinched as I envisioned being killed without ever fishing inside of a girl’s vagina for the elusive “lost condom.” That’s an induction to manhood that every boy needs and I was not going to be stripped of it.
As we came to the same intersection for the fourth time at breakneck speed, I decided to lay the bike down and take my punishment. My legs were turning to rubber. No matter how close to empty the gas tank was in the ATV, it was more than enough to ensnare me. I swiveled my head ninety degrees to the right to catch a glimpse of him out of my peripheral vision and gauge the distance between us-
TWANG-ANG-ANG-ANG-ANG-ANG-ANG!!!
Robbie told me he was going to steal that thing and mount it on his bedroom wall. Obviously, he never got around to it.
I was so preoccupied with surrender that I didn’t see the stop sign. It deflected my watermelon head and I landed in the corner of a neighbor’s yard with a loud doomth! There was so much blood it looked like I’d used an old maxi pad as a washcloth.
Fighting through the tears and mucus was hard enough.
Fighting Pops was out of the question.
I gave up, lying there vulnerable, waiting for retribution while mumbling profanity and telling Death to go fuck himself. My snazzy Beach Cruiser rolled another twenty yards on its own with Casper at the handlebars, hitting the curb in front of a driveway and finally toppling over with a mournful clank.
A pitiful reminder of the freedom that almost was.
As I laid there looking up at the blue sky for what I thought was the last time, I made my peace with God. Then a dove flew overhead and shit in my eye. It’s inconsequential to the story, really, but I felt you should know because fuck me.
My father parked next to me with the tail pipe aimed at my face. I inhaled the poisonous fumes. For a moment, I thought he was going to kill me painlessly with carbon monoxide. But alas, that would deliver no joy to his mania. My point of view from the grass put him upside down as he lumbered toward me. Though my vision was cloudy from defeat and body fluids, I could see him sha
king his head shamefully as he raised his leather belt with the brass-knuckle buckle. I was beginning to lose consciousness from my meeting with the stop sign. Everything was fading. Before it went dark, I heard my father’s deep roar:
“You should’ve slammed his dick with a toilet lid like I taught you, Innis!”
***
I awoke on my stomach and thought I was in Hell.
It was pitch black all around. Not a shred of light was to be seen. The demonic tones of Billy Ocean screeching “Caribbean Queen” in the recesses of some fiery pit made me brace for the sting of pitchforks in my scrote from horned little monsters. I relaxed when I realized it was just Labianna’s horrible music emanating from another room. I was lying on my own bed.
The pain from getting smashed in the face with a road sign had diminished, but there was still an uncomfortable sensation pulsating through me. I tried to move and sonofaBITCH!! No, no moving. Groggily, I felt around and realized that the blazing spasms surging over my body originated from my ass. I placed my hands on my backside and felt wetness.
“Ah! You’re awake. I didn’t know if you were dead or not.”
My father had cracked open the door to my room. He was checking to see if I was alive. When he saw me shifting around in the semi-dark, he flipped on the overhead light. When he did, I looked in the dresser mirror that stood across from my bed. In the reflection, I could see my ass wrapped with coarse bandaging all the way to mid-thigh. Blood was seeping through. My cheeks were staring at me scornfully. The jeans were off and the bandages conformed to their dimpled consistency. They looked like two misshapen Jell-O molds.
Pops leaned against the door jamb. “Well, I’m glad you’re alive, at least. I called Douglas’ parents, spoke to ‘em about everything. They decided not to press any charges once they realized their kid was watching baldies in the bathroom. His father seemed to realize that if they pushed the issue, the whole story would come out as to why Douglas was on that ladder in the first place. They agreed to take care of the medical bills if we agreed to keep our mouths shut about it.” His eyes drilled into mine. “You do want to keep this between us, don’t you, Innis?”