by Alan Spencer
He thought he could move, but Craig stayed hidden. The robber pounded the bat into Brandon’s rib cage. His father grunted and faltered to the ground, moaning, the worst look on his face playing out in dramatic fashion like a person drowning and helpless to reach air.
“I think I want more than your wallet. You’re a bit too grabby with my lady.”
“Fuck him up,” the woman shouted. Her eyes were ignited by the prospect of violence shed in her honor. She hovered around Brandon waiting for the action to play out. “Beat his skull in. He was lookin’ at me funny. He was going to rape me. Behind a Denny’s, Rob, is that what I deserve?”
“Were you going to do something with my lady?” He aimed the baseball bat at Brandon’s crotch. “You’re not even that good looking, but my woman can pick ’em. The dumb men with small dicks and big wallets.”
“No!” He held up his hand in surrender. “I meant no harm. Take my wallet. She talked to me first. She flirted, man—honest. I meant no harm.”
The incident had ended with Brandon suffering three broken ribs and a concussion. He was bleeding from the head afterwards. He hid his face in shame from Craig who came to his aid when the two strangers finally fled the scene. Brandon even made Craig lie about it to the cops and his mother. “I took you to Denny’s for breakfast, and I was robbed. That’s how I got hurt. Simple as that, and that’s all you say, Craig.”
Rethinking the situation and its outcome, he wouldn’t allow the scene to escalate this time. Something was triggered in him, and he refused to remain on standby as his father got pummeled. He searched the alley for a weapon. The best he produced was a chunk of the curb the size of a baseball. He aimed for the assailant’s head. One throw was all it took, Craig suddenly able to pitch the piece with perfect control—and for a moment, he wondered if Dr. Krone had anything to do with the newfound ability—and it struck the assailant’s skull with a sick crunch.
“Agggghhh!” The man spun backwards, bleeding from a gash in his head the shape of an upside down triangle. He dropped the bat with a hollow ringing sound. Brandon picked it up, and charging at him, he slammed it onto the man’s back repeatedly. “Throw my wallet onto the pavement. And give me yours while you’re at it.” He raised the bat to the woman, pointing it at her face. “You keep your pussy to yourself. You keep acting like that, someone’s going to slit your throat one of these days, and your man won’t be able to do a damn thing to stop it.”
He glanced at Craig as relief washed over his features. “That’s my boy! You should pitch for the Yankees. Holy shit, you were dead on. Dead. Fucking. On.”
The robber tossed his wallet at Brandon's feet, fearing another blow. Half his face was red with trailing lines of blood. “Please, don’t hurt me…”
His father recovered the wallet, but after bending down, he clutched his ribs. “That’s going to leave a bruise. I should shove this up your ass.”
The woman bit at her nails, pacing the same four steps, left to right. She noticed Craig and snarled. She mouthed something Craig couldn’t understand, even this time.
The second wallet was offered up, the woman digging it begrudgingly out of her purse and throwing it underhanded in their direction.
“Now get out of here before I really fuck you up.” Brandon enjoyed his victory. Testosterone, Craig thought, is working its magic. “This bat looks too new. I want to break it in some more. What do you think, son? Knock her head around a bit, and it’ll be ready for nine innings, huh?” He swung it twice in the air at head-level and shouted his final warning, “Now get out of here before I really do hurt you!”
The two fled the scene, the woman helping the man to his feet. His father called Craig over, then lowered to his knees and hugged him close. Brandon kissed his forehead, and that was the first time that’d happened without Tina instructing him to do so. His face beamed with pride. “That’s my boy. You saved my skin. You’re a hell of a shot, kid. Anytime you want to play catch in the backyard, you got it.”
You’re lying, but I’ll accept the compliment.
“We’re skipping school today. We can’t eat at Denny’s. We have to book it out of here, so how about Homer’s Donuts? I’ll take you to the mall afterwards. We’ll pump quarters into those arcade games all day.” He counted the money in the robber’s wallet. “Yes we will.”
Here came the equivalent to a court’s swearing in, the man saying, “Promise you won’t tell Mom about this. She wouldn’t understand. This is between us.” His father placed his hand on Craig’s head. “I love you. I don’t say that enough. Now how about breakfast?—all the donuts you can eat.”
Craig nodded, a childlike giddiness overwhelming him. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
This was a better ending than Craig crying on the street until somebody finally called the police and Brandon was rushed to the hospital for head trauma.
Rob cradled his forehead. The blood wouldn’t stop issuing from the gash. It stained his shirt and hands, both dripping with red. Misty kept him on his feet, though she struggled not to tip over due to his weight leaning against her. She was crying, hysterical, shaking, and speaking so fast, “He got your wallet. He got my wallet. You’re bleeding. It’s all over you. That fucking kid. He did this. We can’t let them get away with this. But look at you. Oh God, Rob, look at you! They got our money. That goddamn brat fucked everything up.”
“We’ll find them,” Rob encouraged her, closing his eyes because he was so dizzy. He thought he was about to puke or pass out. “First, get me home. I need a drink. I need to lie down. I’m woozy.”
“It’s barely nine in the morning. You shouldn’t be drinking.”
“To swallow some pain killers, you stupid bitch.”
They were at the end of the alley where it fed into the street. Their Chevy truck was parked nearby for the quick getaway.
Then a random voice called out to them. “I suggest you wait on that drink.”
“Who said that?” Rob was forced out of his daze. He feared it was the police. “I didn’t hurt anybody. I’m the victim. The guy who did this, he’s with a boy. Maybe ten years old. The dude assaulted me.”
A man in a white lab coat was leaning against the wall. He was a portly man. The double chin was prominent, like a glazed fleshy tire. He sweated in the morning sun. It dripped down his face. He was waxen in the yellow glare, melting in the heat. The man smiled at them with recognition. Delight played upon his face.
Rob called out to the stranger, “What are you smiling at, asshole? You know me?”
“You don’t know me.” He started toward them, marching slowly. “And you don’t need to.”
Misty called out to him, praying she could reason with the man or coax him to help her boyfriend. “Are you a doctor? Would you help him? I can’t stop the bleeding.”
“I won’t be able to assist you,” he replied coolly, but then his face became the color of a blocked artery, and he shrieked, “because I want to continue the bleeding!”
Misty screamed. The stranger raced toward them, advancing quickly for an overweight man. He extended his fingers to Rob’s throat, and the force was unreal, Misty thought she’d seen it happen the wrong way, her mind registering the events through a grief-stricken mind. But she blinked, shook her head, cried, cursed, turned away, stared harder, concentrated with every ounce of her being and the outcome didn’t change. The man’s fingers had punctured through his neck up to the knuckle with quadruple pops of her boyfriend’s trachea. The connection sounded like a corer being driven through an apple.
Rob’s eyes threatened to spill out of the sockets, they were so wide, stretched to shed maximum terror. He gargled, choking on fingers and blood. “Grah-gaaaaack!”
Removing his fingers, the doctor slapped a wad of tissue onto the pavement.
Rob faltered to his knees, aspirating on blood. It spurted in gobs out the concave holes in his neck. His larynx gushed in the blaring sunlight.
She fell to her knees beside him, erupting in panic. “Rob!”
“"W-what are you saying?”
The lascivious smile was like a slithering worm. “We’ll need to stay cool for what I’m about to do to you.”
Blessed
He didn’t have a chance to enjoy an afternoon of arcade games or the breakfast of donuts because Craig was displaced yet again. He didn’t realize the transition until the change was completed. It was instantaneous. This time, he was sitting on a chair in his childhood bedroom. Moments after he arrived, he closed his eyes without willing it. He sensed others in the room. Hands were rubbed together. A throat was cleared. A nervous tension floated about the room.
A man’s voice spoke, “Are you ready, Tina?”
His mother replied, though she was nervous. “Yes, I’m ready.”
It was Parker Stevens’s voice asking the question. He was the pastor at Neiman Heights Non-Denominational Church. He was also their next-door neighbor.
He was eight years old at this time. He was also scared. His mother tore him from playing outside just moments ago. It was two thirty, he remembered, and the time was very important. Brandon would be home from work soon. Craig later learned today was the only day Parker could perform Craig’s indoctrination into the church. Today, he was being blessed. And if Brandon learned of this blessing, he’d punch a wall—and later punch Tina and possibly Parker.
His father was a devout believer in nothing. Craig asked him when he was older if he was an atheist. Brandon’s response was, “That’d mean I believe in some organized belief, and I don’t. Only thing I believe in is a dick in a pussy.”
The sense of haste was evident. Parker had skipped reading the scriptures he’d planned to recite. Parker touched both hands to Craig’s head. They were wet with holy water. “Lord, I invite Craig Horsy into our congregation. He is a young boy with potential to do good in the community and in his life. Guide him with your Holy Spirit and allow him to overcome sin in its many forms. Love him with your grace, support him with your infinite knowledge. Do you accept Christ into your life, Craig?”
He hadn’t been aware the question was addressed to him. The adult in the child’s body waited. He’d forgotten how he’d reacted to the private blessing back then.
Parker repeated, “Do you accept Christ into your life?”
Tina whispered, “Say yes.”
“Yes,” he said, too loud.
Parker wasn’t pleased. “Come to Christ willingly…come to him.”
The front door opened. Brandon was home. Tina gasped, startled and ready to panic. “He’s already home. Damn it.”
Parker turned up the heat and shifted into prayer overdrive. “God, guide this creation into your arms. He’s been blocked by a man worthy of your love and divinity. He has lost his way, but do not give up on this man. Watch over the Horsy family in the future and pray they can one day embrace your Holy Spirit together.”
Dad’s not going to embrace any Holy Spirit.
He snickered on accident.
Tina elbowed him. “Craig, stop it.”
Parker continued unaffected by his outburst or Brandon moving about downstairs. “Come to Christ willingly, Craig, come to him.”
Ssssssst.
Brandon had opened a can of Lark’s beer. He concluded the day of patching pot holes and cutting up the roads with a cement saw with liquid refreshment. Again, Craig had to stifle a laugh.
“Let me talk to him,” Parker urged her. He failed to end the prayer without the habitual “Amen”. Did that mean the blessing wasn’t sealed, that the stamp wasn’t placed on the envelope and wouldn’t ship to God, he wondered. “He’s a sensible man.”
“No,” Tina whispered insistently. “He won’t understand. He is not a sensible man. You can’t leave through the front door. I’m sorry. He’ll hurt you. Do it for me, okay? He’ll take it out on me and maybe Craig.”
Craig kept his eyes closed. The worried feeling increased. It was an unwanted force field of heat surrounding his skin. Tina was truly frightened. She feared Brandon and his repercussions, and with good reason.
“Okay,” Parker digressed. “I’ll go down the balcony. I can crawl like the best of them.”
“This is so embarrassing. You’ve been so nice to me. I’ll have to make it up to you. Let me make it up to you.”
He heard the rub of cloth. The two had hugged. “God bless you, Tina. Stay vigilant in your journey to find God.”
“I promise I will.”
The window was cracked open. Craig finally opened his eyes to catch the man in street clothes crawl out the window and onto the balcony and jump down into the backyard.
Tina looked at him, frazzled around the eyes. “I’m trying, Craig, I really am.”
“Trying to do what,” he asked in his kid’s voice. He stated the same question back then.
“I’m trying to raise you right.” She looked downstairs with disgust. “I wish I could do something to convince your dad to go to church.” She muttered, “I can’t go on like this.”
Craig agreed. He wanted to offer words of encouragement, but he was distracted by the blemish on her face. Her cherry blush lipstick was smeared.
Come to Christ willingly, huh?
Before he could comment on the observation, the scene cut to another part of his life.
Happy Halloween
Craig heaved the last two eggs in the carton at Mrs. Neilson’s front door. They cracked and then exploded, spilling thick yellow yolk down the wood. His high school keyboarding instructor failed him last semester, and this was his revenge. The old bag had it coming, he thought, with devilish delight.
Alice Denny handed him another egg, saving it for him special. “I kept this one back for you. Make it count. Imagine the hag’s face when you throw it this time. Really make her pay.”
“Oh, I will. The bitch is getting it real good.”
He aimed the egg at one of the draped windows. Craig hoped it was her bedroom door. Maybe she’d think the spirit of Thomas Hayden would be knocking and wanting to come in and pay her a visit. Thomas Hayden was a local serial killer from twenty years ago. He hung his victims from their ceiling fans and dismembered their extremities. After they were only a torso, he’d turn on the fan and the limbless corpse would spin around and splatter blood about the room. Thomas also left the eyes alone, believing they harbored the soul. If he kept the souls intact, it wasn’t true murder, Hayden reasoned, though it didn’t prevent the state from administering the death penalty on him.
“Happy Halloween, bitch!” Craig launched the egg, the object smashing against the window. “I hope that keyboard keeps you warm at night. You can stick that mouse up your butt too!”
He was minutes into the next memory, and he finally acknowledged the change. Craig was no longer in his upstairs bedroom. Parker Stevens and Tina were long gone. But this was a better memory already. It was Halloween night, and he didn’t wish to end the current festivities.
They fled down the street, escaping the scene of the crime. They didn’t wear costumes, but instead, all black. They were ninjas of the night. Lit jack-o’-lanterns bobbed in both sides of his peripheral. The demon eyes watched as if cheering them on: “Make mischief!” “Raise hell!” “Entertain us!” “Satan approves!”
Craig and Alice completed three blocks of sprinting and then stopped, huffing, out of breath and high on adrenaline. Together, they hunkered behind a mulberry bush, checking if the coast was clear. Mrs. Neilson opened the front door, her expression furrowed as if she’d been disturbed from a session of late-night reading or from working on one of her famous hard puzzles. The prudish woman stepped onto the broken eggs in her slippers, cursing, “Aw shit!”
She clutched a broom in both hands, raising it in the air. “Damn kids.” Watching both ends of the street, she gave up the witch hunt. “Forget it. I’ll clean this mess up in the mo
rning.”
Mrs. Neilson slammed the door, choosing to turn in rather than scour the neighborhood for the culprits.
“Dumb bitch,” Craig laughed so hard his throat ached. “It’s all worth it. That’s the last time she’ll mess with me.”
Alice chimed in, “I wish I had a teacher I detested with such a passion.”
He was in the ninth grade, Alice in the eighth. They planned tonight’s festivities for months. They were too old to trick or trick, but not too old to trick, as Alice had stated on many occasions. She had bloomed this year. Breasts arrived in a generous package. They were as big as a twenty-year-old’s. But Craig was best friends with her. The breasts were something only his eyes enjoyed. The great part about having a girl best friend, he believed, was how she shared all the girl secrets. She told him about her first period: “It sucks because you have to buy all these feminine products. I’m already tired of it, and I won’t be done until menopause. My mom gave me the longest spiel about periods. ‘Always carry a tampon in your purse everywhere you go.’ ‘Menstrual cramps are different for everybody.’ My cramps are like somebody shoving a hand up my cooch and trying to rip out my stomach.”
Knocked from thought, a darting pirate paused at the house two ahead of them. Craig vaguely recognized the person because of the costume. It was Dennis Brockman. He was the equivalent of a class clown from hell. Laugh at his lame jokes or else become barraged with mean pranks.
“What the hell is he doing?” Alice studied the yard, opening her mouth and stifling it with her hand. “Don’t tell me he’s doing what I’m thinking?”
Dennis bent down as if taking a seat on a pair of concrete steps. It was an extended walkway, so he wasn’t right up against the porch but instead closer to the street. He hiked down his pants.
Alice pressed her hands to her face. “He’s pooping in a jack-o’-lantern.”
Craig reiterated, “Dennis is pooping in a jack-o’-lantern.”
Dennis caught them watching. He cackled, throwing his head back. After he lifted up his baggy pants, he ran toward them, proud of his excursion. “Man, I have to rush home. I need some toilet paper ASAP. A group of us are pooping in as many jack-o’-lanterns as possible. Bobbing for apples is too boring. This is cool, right? It was my idea. I’m putting a patent on it.”