He closed his eyes and bowed his head as he tried to control his breathing some and change the direction of where his mind was leading him, but he couldn’t control either. His chest continued to slightly heave and the memory of the darkness enveloped him…
Stuart was on all fours looking up in utter darkness at the doorway where Mary had just stood when he heard a heavy metal clank on the outside of the door that he knew couldn’t be good. He also thought that he heard a faint laugh from Brock or Keith just outside the door, but he knew that must have been his imagination because once those heavy doors were closed to the Dungeon you couldn’t have heard a politician with a bullhorn just outside.
The Dungeon was a bomb shelter buried in his backyard that his great-uncle had built back in the 70’s when he owned Stuart’s family home. Its only entrance was from a discrete storm cellar like staircase from an alley behind Freeway Street, as it was built into the hillside that the rows of houses stood on in Maple Valley Subdivision. When Stuart’s family first moved to the house in the summer before his fifth-grade year, his dad had told him the story of the bunker and that his uncle said he had dumped truckloads of iron and steel scrap into the hole before pouring four feet of concrete all around the bunker. His Uncle Dan was an engineer that had been scared to death during the Cuban Missile crisis, and made the bunker for his family and friends to survive the impending all out global thermonuclear war that he was sure would happen. He had spent tons of money and decades of his free time in designing the generator back up system, the sand-and-water air filtration system, the stand-alone sewage and water treatment system, and a hundred other things that made it state of the art for its day.
While the Dungeon may have been all of that and a bag of chips in its day, Stuart remembers visiting his Uncle Dan in the summers when he was younger and always finding him in the bunker with a couple of his senior citizen buddies playing cards, drinking beer, and listening to hippie rock on the ancient sound system down there. They would let him sit on the cot by the door and read twenty-year-old comic books from the stack next to it as they played gin, poker, or crazy eights late into the night. The Dungeon was like a big studio apartment with a bathroom in the corner that was separated by a shower curtain. The décor was a painted concrete floor, enough cots scattered around the room to sleep ten easily, and tin siding covered the walls and ceiling. Besides the card table near the far end of the room by the kitchen, rows of shelving holding boxes and freeze dried food were all the furnishings in the place. Stuart liked thumbing through the old comic books from the stack that was as tall as him, but mostly he enjoyed just listening to his Uncle Dan and friends talk about their yesteryears while they listened to Dr. Hook, Foghat, and Doobie Brothers albums. The smell of the Pall Malls smoke wafting out the open doors up into the night, and the sounds of Budweiser cans being cracked open over the soft laughter of old geezers telling stories about their youth always lightened Stuart’s heart and made him feel special that they let him be a part of it.
When Stuart’s family moved to Spearfish after his Uncle Dan died, Stuart would come down into the Dungeon with his friends sometimes to play or hideout from his dad when he knew he had a butt kicking coming to him, but it wasn’t the same without his Uncle Dan there. As Stuart got older though, he seemed to need more alone time; and the Dungeon provided that. He needed so much alone time that by his senior year in high school, he pretty much lived in the Dungeon. He left for work, school, and sometimes to eat dinner with his parents, but otherwise he was in the Dungeon on his computer that was stacked on his Uncle Dan’s old card table. By his senior year, he didn’t have any friends and didn’t want any. He was living for nothing else but to bide his time to be old enough and save enough money to leave. Leave his family; his house; his town. It didn’t really matter where, but somewhere away from here. San Diego or San Francisco would be ideal, but maybe someplace like Daytona would fit Stuart just fine.
Stuart had spent the first several months of his senior year living on the web by putting his application into any college that he thought he might have a chance at when considering his mediocre grades and even lesser finances. Stuart had heard from the in-state school that he had been accepted, and received several other rejection letters, but he still had plenty of options open. Anyplace where he could have a fresh start and had at least a chance at being accepted for being different had to be better than here.
The night that Mary came by the Dungeon, Stuart had just sat down to the card table and was getting ready to turn his desktop computer on to check the status of several application responses that were past due. Stuart had worked at Slappy’s Pizza since last summer and had put it down for his mailing address instead of his home so his father didn’t intercept the correspondence. He had just finished a six-hour shift and was disappointed when his manager told him that he still hadn’t received the two responses that he had been waiting for, so he hurried home to see if he could check their status online. His computer was just booting up when he heard the rapping on the Dungeon’s heavy doors. It startled him because nobody ever came out here, not even his dad anymore. Just when he thought that he had been hearing things, the rapping came again. He sauntered over to the door staring at it like it was some strange object that he had never seen before. As he got to the door, the rapping started a third time, but this time it was a little more intense.
Stuart undid the lock and opened the door a crack to peer through. When he saw that it was Mary, he hesitantly opened the door about ten inches or so and said “What are you doing here?”
Mary had worked the same late shift at Slappy’s with Stuart, but while he was still in his dirty kitchen uniform, she had changed into tight jeans and a black low cut tank top that was much more revealing than her uniform had been. She held up two envelopes with one hand and pushed the door the rest of the way open with the other.
“I brought you something,” she said as she handed him the two envelopes and strolled into the Dungeon. Stuart inspected the letters and she casually walked around the open room peering into and around things as if she was intrigued by its secrets.
When Stuart realized that these were from the two colleges he had been waiting for he was instantly suspicious. He had asked his manager Mike if any mail had been delivered for him just before leaving his shift, as he hadn’t seen them on the counter where the mail sits. It would be just like Mary to have some sinister plan to make his life more miserable than it already was.
“Where did you get these?” he asked trying to keep accusation out of his voice, but he was sure he wasn’t successful. Neither one of the envelopes had much heft to them, so he thought that they probably didn’t contain good news. He opened the one from San Diego state first and saw that the first lines said “We regret to inform you…” so he stopped reading and began working on the one from Daytona College.
Mary acted as if she was too engrossed in the boxes of miscellaneous stuff and other scatterings to hear his question. She kept sauntering around the room with her thumbs tucked in her back pockets and said nonchalantly to him “I haven’t been down here since 7th grade. It really hasn’t changed a bit has it?”
“Where did you get these?” Stuart repeated. He was still working on opening the second envelope and the tension in his voice was giving away his uneasiness about the situation.
Mary had completed a circle of the room and made her way back to Stuart. “Mike asked me to run them by to you. He said that he found them underneath something right after you left,” she said as she watched him wrestle with the second envelope from a few feet in front of him.
Stuart finally got the second one open and began rifling through the three pages. He had to get to the fourth line of the letter before he realized that this was the one. He was accepted to Daytona College! Stuart subconsciously did a fist pump out of pure glee before he remembered that his nemesis Mary Castlebrock was standing in front of him.
“Good news?” she asked as she rose up on her tip to
es and tried to peer over the edge of the paper. She was biting the corner of her bottom lip slightly, but grinning with the rest of her face. As she stood up and leaned forward she knew that her low-cut tank top would be revealing more than most teenage boys could resist looking at, but Stuart’s gaze didn’t leave the acceptance letter as he sped read the last two pages.
“Good news?” she repeated with a little bit of frustration as she settled back on her heals and gave up the enticement.
“Huh?” Stuart asked as he looked up from the letter. “Oh, I’ve been accepted to Daytona College in Florida!” he tried to say indifferently, but his pride beamed through.
“Wow,” she said feigning some amazement. “I’m going to Black Hills State in the fall. Why are you going so far away?” she asked.
If felt weird having a conversation with Mary. Mary usually was talking at him, or about him; but never to him. Stuart was sure that something wasn’t right. “Just to get a fresh start I guess,” he responded before changing his gaze back to the acceptance letter.
“A fresh start?” Mary asked. Her question just hung in the air for a while. Mary didn’t follow up or even move. Eventually, the awkwardness was enough for Stuart that he felt that he had to respond. He folded the acceptance letter up, stuffed it in his back pocket, and walked over to the overfull trash can to throw the envelopes and rejection letter from Sand Diego State away.
“Yeah, you know,” Stuart said as he turned back to face her. “A fresh start,” he repeated.
Mary had somehow walked towards him while he had been turned and she was now a little too close. She was in his personal space looking up at him with flirty eyes that made Stuart uncomfortable as she said “I think everyone could use a fresh start at some point.”
Mary took another short step closer to him and her perfume filled Stuart’s nostrils as she continued to make eye contact with Stuart. Stuart involuntarily took a short step backward, but bumped into the trash can and couldn’t go any further. He felt his stomach rise in his throat and he wanted nothing more than to find a hiding spot somewhere within the Dungeon to escape this moment.
Mary reached out and looped her two index fingers through Stuarts side belt loops on his work slacks and pulled him into her so that their abdomens were just touching and she had to look up into his eyes. “What do you think Stuart?” Mary asked in a slow soft voice. “Should we give each other a fresh start?”
Stuart’s heart was pounding so hard he thought that his ears were going to explode. His mind was racing and he didn’t know how to react. After what seemed like too long, he reached down and pulled her hands from his belt loops and tried to step away. Because he was backed up to the trash can, his right heel caught the bottom of the can and both him and the can fell to the concrete floor with a crash. Both of Stuarts legs were left draped up over the can and the refuse spilled onto the floor and his torso.
Mary cupped her hands to her mouth as she began laughing almost hysterically. Stuart laid there for a moment in a mix of papers and month old food remnants from the trash can, and just stared up at Mary as his mind raced to try and figure out what was happening and what to do next.
Mary’s longtime boyfriend Brock Donovan and her older brother Keith bounded into the room as Mary began to try and control her laughter. Brock was full blood redneck with an athletic build that seemed to follow Mary at ten paces wherever she went. Mary’s brother Keith was a hulk of a young man that was always with Brock when he wasn’t on the football field.
“Turning out better than you thought, huh?” Brock asked Mary as he sidled over to her after taking the scene in.
“The best,” she said as finally got her laughter under control. “Although I hadn’t even told him the best part yet,” she said as Brock slid in behind her and rested his chin on her shoulder. Keith just stood behind Brock and his girlfriend looking around the room with a blank look on his face as if he couldn’t comprehend what was happening.
With some clumsy awkwardness, Stuart made it to his feet and brushed some of the garbage that had stuck to him off his clothes. “Aren’t you even going to ask?” Mary inquired with a deceptive innocence in her voice.
“Ask what?” Stuart said as his focus turned back to Mary and Brock.
“What the best part is,” she said as Brock began to chuckle with his head still bent over resting on Mary’s shoulder.
After a very pregnant pause, Stuart decided that he wasn’t ever going to get them out of here without hearing their punch line. “What’s the best part Mary?” he asked with zero anticipation.
“Daytona College,” she said and let it hang in the air. She stepped forward from Brock and closer to Stuart as her eyes began to show pure hatred and her facial muscles constricted as she explained what she thought was the best part.
“What?” Stuart asked not understanding what she was implying.
“How could you really think that a nationally renowned college would have any interest in letting you on their campus?” Mary continued with a little too much emotion and fervor in her voice. “A loser like you hanging out on Daytona Beach?” she asked rhetorically. She took another small step forward to where she was awkwardly close to him again, but now hatred and evil was spewing from her gaze and directed solely at Stuart.
Stuart still wasn’t understanding what she was getting at. He reached for the acceptance letter in his back pocket and brought it out to inspect it as she continued to rant at him. She snatched it from his grasp and flipped to the last page.
“I wrote this letter you loser!” she yelled as spittle came off her lips. She placed her index finger on a line in the last paragraph and shoved the letter into his face.
Stuart took the letter back and read the last paragraph as Mary began ranting about how Stuart was a waste of a human being and how she had written the letter after she’d intercepted the real letters at work a week ago. Stuart read through the last paragraph two more times because he was having a difficult time realizing that the acceptance letter wasn’t real, and that he hadn’t realized the letter was a fake when he’d read it through the first time. The paragraph read:
WE LOOK FORWARD TO MEETING YOU STUART AND SHOWING YOU THE MANY ADVANTAGES THAT DAYTONA COLLEGE HAS TO OFFER. PLEASE REALIZE THAT YOU ARE THE WORLD’S BIGGEST LOSER AND WILL NEVER GET AN OPPORTUNITY TO SET FOOT ON OUR CAMPUS. IF YOU HAVEN’T REALIZED IT YET, THIS LETTER IS A HOAX TO SHOW YOU THAT HOPE IS NOT A GOOD THING FOR A PERSON LIKE YOU. ALL HOPE WILL DO FOR YOU IS DISAPPOINT YOU. YOU WILL BE IN THIS TOWN FOR AS LONG AS YOU LIVE, LIVING UP TO YOUR LEGEND AS THE WORLD’S BIGGEST LOSER.
Mary grabbed Stuart’s wrist and made him lower the letter from his face and she stepped in even a little closer. As she spoke, her index finger rose to Stuart’s chest and began poking him for emphasis at what she felt were the most important syllables.
“You are a loser Stuart Rappaport, and you don’t de-serve a fresh start,” and with those words, Mary took a step back and turned towards the Dungeon’s door.
Brock Donovan’s larger frame filled Stuarts view just as Mary’s left it. He stood as close to Stuart as Mary had been, but he spoke with a softer voice so that there was little chance that Mary could hear him from across the room. “I don’t know what you did to her to make her that mad; but you are just one big loser,” Brock told Stuart just before he doubled Stuart up with a left to his midsection. He then dropped him to the hard floor with an even harder right upper cut to the solar plexus. When he fell to the ground, his right leg extended and knocked out one of the legs to the card table that caused his computer monitor, keyboard, and other paraphernalia to spill to the floor with thuds and cracks that didn’t sound as if much could have survived it.
Stuart tried to gasp for air while on all fours, but couldn’t make his diaphragm work. He’d had the wind knocked out of him before, so while it was very uncomfortable, he knew what to expect. He looked up to the door and saw only Mary standing there in the doorway. He could feel tears welling up in his eye
s, but he could still make out the hatred in her eyes very clearly.
When Mary was sure that Stuart was watching her, she thought of her final words to leave him with and said “Why don’t you stay in here and think about that for a while … faggot!”
Mary slipped through the open crack of the doorway and it shut behind her almost immediately. There was a metallic click and then bang from outside the doors that Stuart instinctively knew was something meant to lock him in the Dungeon. With his chest throbbing, his abdomen aching, and his mind reeling; Stuart turned over on the cold floor and sobbed. He sobbed until he fell asleep.
Stuart finished his bike ride back to the Dungeon with little effort, but in a somber mood after reliving the night that Mary had visited him. He didn’t know why he deserved that kind of abuse when all he wanted to ever do was get away from this place and those kinds of people in the first place. Stuart knew that he didn’t fit in, and he wanted to not be in this town any less than they wanted him out of it.
The Hike (Book 1): Survivors Page 13