Blood and Sawdust

by Jason S Ridler

  Not a pretty face in the bunch. Ugly as all hell, he thought. He couldn’t scope because no one was worth spying on. Scoping was what Eva called it. “And I’d be willing to bet my Klingon knife collection you’re a leg man,” she’d said at the Jersey Tourney when she’d caught Malcolm gawking at the same piece of arm candy in a white leather dress and caramel high heels and not much else, as absolutely certain of her position as she almost always was. “You start from the foot and work your way up.”

  Malcolm shrugged. “Beats getting black eyes.”

  “What do you mean, honey?”

  “You have a great…you know.”

  “Tits?”

  “Yeah.” He felt safe talking to Eva about this stuff. But not when he was talking about Eva to Eva. “But if I just stared at them or your face, you’d crack my nose. If I keep my eyes low and work my way up, I don’t have to worry about her or her Glock-packing protector deciding the bar should be painted with my brains.”

  Eva had laughed. “You even have a siege mentality when it comes to scoping a nice piece of ass. How are you going to get laid like that?” No answer but a shrug.

  He huffed out more library air as a cart full of books made a hushed rumble across the rotten tiger-skinned carpet. A gal pushed the cart. Teenager. Not his style. Old school glasses, a black concert T-shirt for some band called The Arrogant Worms tossed on over a bulky black sweater. Hell, if not for the glossy lipstick she could have been a dude. She pushed the cart to a row of shelves crammed with boxes full of trashed comic books, then unloaded her own boxes there.

  She stood. “Whooo. Those men in tights are heavy.” Her voice was a nasally whine, almost cartoonish.

  She wasn’t talking to Malcolm. At least he didn’t think so. He concentrated on his list.

  “Can you do me a favour?”

  Malcolm looked up. “Me?”

  She looked up at the ceiling with a universal “what a dumb ass” expression. “No, your invisible twin brother. Yes, you. Just keep your eyes on this. The rug rats upstairs tend to get sticky fingers when I turn around. Be back in a second.”

  She took off before he could grunt a reply. Whatever, he thought and went back to his list when, on his periphery, he saw them. Three kids were trying to be ninjas of the library stacks. Their forms inched closer and closer before peeking out the far side of the aisle. A shaggy, brown-haired kid chewing gum with his mouth shut, the kind of grim determination that Malcolm found odd on someone who no doubt still believed in Santa Claus.

  Malcolm kept still as they slowly walked down the aisle, guilty looks already forming on their faces. They bent down, whispering to each other, and the leader stopped chewing and stuck his hand in the fresh new box.

  “Touch it and I’ll cut off your hands,” Malcolm said.

  The kid’s froze for a second. But Malcolm sensed the leader’s dedication, hand already in the cookie jar. The fingers gripped the torn comic.

  Malcolm sprang from his painful chair and they bolted down the hall, feet pounding until they found the door, the leader’s hands gripping a comic cover. The actual comic lay naked on the floor. “Enjoy the wrapping,” he said, and some faceless patron Shhhh’d him.

  He picked up the abandoned booty: an X-Men comic. He flipped through the pages. God, how he used to love this stuff. The colours, the beautiful babes, the massive heroes kicking ass like it was going out of style. But he barely recognized the X-men here. New mutants. New costumes. Might as well be a different comic. Between the bright colours and action were ads for movies, bands, and TV shows he hadn’t heard of. He’d listen to the other teens in at the library in Troy talking about bands on their iPod, movies they snuck into seeing or downloaded from Netflix, or telling second-hand jokes from the last episode of TV they’d seen the night before. All those tiny connections, points of contact, without the blood and the screaming of the circuit, the shallow smiles and dirty hands of the crowd, befriending the strange ducks like Eva but flying solo most days just to get by. Even that gang of comic robbers seemed like a team of some kind.

  “I said watch the merchandise, not ruin it.”

  The girl with glasses was back with another stacked cart. He dropped the comic on the top box. “I’ll be sure to tell my invisible twin brother to be more careful when he works for free at the library.”

  Some old man playing solitaire shhh’d them.

  “They only stole the cover,” Malcolm said.

  “Well, maybe you two aren’t completely useless. Here, help me with these.” Two tired to argue, and not craving the joy of the pain chair, he unloaded the boxes, and the weight didn’t bite into his muscles too bad or give his sore hands any grief. Amazing what being a day away from Rob could do.

  “I’m Paige,” she said. “What do you and your invisible brother call yourselves?”

  He stuffed comics from an overflowing box into a limp box. “He’s nameless, and I’m Moe.” The name popped out of him before he could retract it. But it gave him a weird security to use a fake name with a civilian outside the circuit. Hell, he figured, what are the chances her real name is Paige? Kids make up nicknames all the time and this one was way too convenient. “How much you make chasing out ankle-biting comic thieves?”

  She shook her head. “Oh, nothing. Getting some volunteer work done so it looks good on my university application.”

  “When the hell are you going to university?” Not anytime soon. She was sixteen at best and sure as hell not nineteen

  “Eventually. Never hurts to get ahead. There.” She said, looking at the line of stacked comic boxes. “Perfect. Now I can split this place and get something to eat. Thanks for the all the help, Moe and nameless.” She pushed the cart, then stopped, and he searched for what kind of thing you said after helping strange girls in libraries, but he wasn’t fast enough and she finally laughed. “Okay, fine. I’ll ask since you don’t seem capable of catching a hint with a net. Do you want to go for the best deal on hot dogs and fries in Kingston?”

  Shocked, Malcolm stammered, dusting himself off. “Well, I don’t know, I guess—”

  “Unless you’re too scared to hang with a library freak?”

  He cringed at the accusation, then shoved the pad and pen in his back pocket. He still needed time to kill before meeting the judge. What harm could there be in hotdogs and fries? “Lead the way.”

  He followed Paige through the clouded afternoon, and everything about the city seemed grey and hard. Except Paige. She talked his ears off about comic books, of which she considered herself an expert, as they cut through the city, back to the main drag. More people were on the street, including cops with big guts and moustaches.

  “How far away is this place?”

  “Just a block. So do you collect?”

  “Comics?”

  “No, stamps. What the hell have I been talking about for ten minutes?”

  Her tone was playful and he eased his guard some. “I liked X-Men. Avengers. Fantastic Four.”

  Her four eyes stared at him. “Team comics? Really?”

  “Is there a law against liking the Avengers?”

  “Not that I know of. It’s just, well, odd. You have the distinct manner and bearing of a Wolverine or Punisher-fan. You know, the one-Johnny-Bad-Ass-Against-The-Whole-World comics.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe a while ago, yeah. But there’s only so much macho bullshit I can handle. Guys killing whole armies by themselves. Issue after issue. Never really getting hurt. Getting beat up so bad and still making a comeback with a great one-liner for just such an occasion. Fights aren’t like that. A guy gets an advantage and presses it, it doesn’t matter how good your intentions or how bad you want to win, you almost always end up glassy-eyed or dead. No one runs around with broken bones to save the day.”

  He stopped, looked back. Paige was a handful of steps behind him.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Guess that hit a nerve.”

  “You think?” she said, walking up to him as they made Princess S
treet, and they trudged onward. She broke the silence as they approached a storefront full of electronic sounds and mock digital battle cries. “Here we are. Best cheap meat in the city.”

  Above the large glass doors that barely kept out the electronic bleeps and bloops was a sign that said Lazer Time Arcade and Grill. “This joint looks like it escaped from the dark ages.”

  “It did. They even have Pac Man and pinball for only a quarter. But the steamy hot dogs are the only reason to go if you’re not interested in Dance Dance Revolution or buying hash.” She opened the door and he followed her in.

  Darkness enveloped them as the door closed, the windows having some kind of weird finish to keep out the sun. Arcade sounds pulsed from all directions, making him dizzy. Rob had long ago given up these places as a hot spot to buy coke. But they all smelled the same. Nacho cheese, sweat, and hash smoke. Fat teenagers with epileptic hands smashed buttons and twisted joysticks to make pretend warriors throw balls of fire. Shit, most of these games were new the last time Rob had dragged Malcolm with him to watch the door in case of a raid.

  And they made Malcolm cringe with anger, for the same damn reason he couldn’t care about Wolverine or the Punisher or Spawn or Cable or every other Johnny Badass who seemed to take a thousand blows to the face and not feel a damn thing…none of them were real.

  Except Milkwood, he thought. He could take that kind of cosmic pounding, and might even be able to do more than Spider Man on steroids. Fine, fine. Milkwood is the exception that proves the rule. The rest of this alpha mutt junk was pure grizzly shit.

  “Malcolm?” Paige yelled from the back of the Arcade, dim house lights hazy with the steam of cheap cooked meat. “Hurry up and get in line before the dogs vamoose!”

  The line up was pretty long so he ran right to her until pain cracked his head and everything went black and swimmy. Something engulfed his head. Leather. The blackness around him stank of leather and he tore at it until someone yanked his hands behind him, twisting his wrist pulling up at the wrong angle so the armbar hurt but wasn’t awful. More hands clasped around him, yanked him here and there as his scream died in the din of heroic cries from electronic warriors.

  Malcolm thrashed wild and savage, suffocating in the dark as someone gripped his legs. The sounds died and a sinister laughter emerged as he heard the metallic thud of boots on stairs. He managed to get a hand free, gripping for something, anything.

  “Grab that wrist!”

  “I’ve got his legs, you do it.”

  So, he thought, there’s at least two of them, and a third screaming, “Hurry!” Great odds. For them. He gripped the railing hard and they pulled him against it, the metal digging in where the cup had left a phantom slash of pain. Two knees to the stomach broke his hold as Malcolm tried to learn to breathe again in the sweaty, suffocating darkness.

  “Kick the fucking door open!” Barrett. It had to be. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Rob was right. All girls were whores and bitches and now he was going to get his ass kicked because he fell for a kind girl in big glasses. “Just toss him the rest of the way,” Barrett grunted.

  They did and Malcolm was airborne, hitting the ground without any wind to have knocked out of himself. Gravel, dirt, and concrete ground lay under his sore hands. Light slapped his face as the leather jacket was removed and Barrett and company looked down at him from a cloudy sky like giants. “Well, if it’s not the defender of zombies his own bad self.”

  Behind them, sneakers were slapping up the stairs. “Shut the fucking door,” Barrett said and the Mohawked one shoved it closed just as Paige ran up, screaming she was going to call the police.

  “Call anyone and we toss him over the edge,” Barrett said, then sneered down. “No bullshit.” Barrett’s eyes were clear, focused. Fuck. The asshole had something to prove and too much free time on his hands to think of how he was going to do it. “Get up.”

  Malcolm did, and seethed at the soreness in his hands.

  “Jesus, this guy’s a pussy. We haven’t even started and he’s already wincing like a whipped mutt.”

  A familiar airless feeling filled him, like being above ground. Sure enough he was. They were on a small patch of roof. A square of gravel and tar. Two stories below his sorry ass was a dumpster full of black and green trash bags. To his right was a small parking lot covered in graffiti and a single Chevy. And since the front of the building was taller than this little roof, no one could see shit.

  “Nice club house,” Malcolm said. “This where you guys sing camp songs about Eskimos and hockey?”

  Barrett tossed his jacket to the dude in grey flannel and with a stoned grin on his face, who scrambled to get it in time. “No. This is where we play fight or flight.” He shrugged his shoulders, then brought up his fists in a guard. “Let’s see which you’ll choose, now that no one’s protecting your sorry ass.” The two punk thugs not holding the door stood on opposite side of the dirty roof, sitting on the railing like it wasn’t covered in pigeon shit or had a twenty-foot drop.

  No way out.

  Barrett lunged, and Malcolm shot up his own guard while taking two steps back.

  “Chicken shit.”

  They stalked each other in a circle, Malcolm retreating near the edge of the roof while his heart throttled itself. Maybe, he thought, things would go quicksand time. Maybe I’ll get a combo, start with an inner kick, follow it up with a straight right and a—

  Barrett’s jab knocked all thoughts out his head. When the thug’s knuckles pulled back from his nose, all he could feel was laughter thudding into his skin and the swell of tears.

  “Come on, get your dukes up, shit grinner,” Barrett said.

  Malcolm wiped his nose on his sleeve. The bloodstain was almost invisible on the black fabric. Pain crackled through his skin and deep into his bones as he imitated a better stance he’d seen a thousand times before: right hand up in front, left hand close to the body. “Okay, I wasn’t ready. Try it again, you shitbird—”

  Another jab slipped through and popped Malcolm’s eye, and more shimmering pain and laughter followed. Malcolm’s body clenched. He stumbled against the edge of the roof, then pushed himself forward. “Is…is that all you got?”

  “Kill him already,” said the Mohawk holding the door with his shoulder. “I want to play Street Fighter.”

  “Fine. Time to pay for that big mouth, fucker.” No quicksand time came. Barrett’s fist were a hurricane of knuckles, each punch smacking Malcolm’s face before he could even think to dodge, block, roll, or entangle. Everything was bullet quick and painful as his guard began to fail and Barrett’s right cross popped him hard on the forehead, sending him sprawling. His palms hit the gravel as thick drops made a smiley face on the broken concrete.

  Suck it up, Slo Mo. You may not win, but don’t go down like this…even Milkwood didn’t go down without a fight. Get up. Get up, you sack of shit! Suck it up, Slow Mo! He sniffed in and swallowed blood, then stood. Tears of pain shook in his eyes, but wouldn’t break. “Bu…Bu…”

  “Shit, dude’s going to start bawling,” said the stoner in flannel.

  Malcolm snarled. “Bu…bunch of pussies.”

  For a sliver of time between heartbeats, Malcolm smiled as well as he could against the shimmering pain. Just like Milkwood before Kudor—

  Then Barrett’s bad punches swirled like angry hornets with knucklebone stingers. Each shot thumped between the beats of his heart and landed on his chin, his shoulder, his stomach. Sickness bit his stomach. All the world was grey clouds and torn knuckles—

  They shouldn’t hurt this bad. He wasn’t Rob. He wasn’t strung out. But they did. Punches that distorted his thoughts. Tearing his mind from his goal of winning tonight. Making everything fuzzy. He wanted to see red. To have some inner strength burst out like a caged monster. For a sick, painful moment he wanted to be the exception that proved the rule. Wanted to lash out, kick ass, and tear this fucker limb from limb.

  Barrett huffed, then leaned back for a straigh
t right, and instinct finally clicked: Malcolm fired a single punch, wild and accurate, and thumped Barrett…on the cheek.

  Barrett gave him a hairy eyeball, then cracked up until he found the breath to speak. “Holy shit, I’ve had snowballs hurt worse than that.”

  “Bet Larry the Zombie throws harder punches,” said the stoner with a wheezy cackle.

  “No shit,” Barrett said, rubbing his cheek. “Might not even leave a bruise.” He snorted. “And look at him. Crying into his diapers. Fists can’t stop from shaking because he lost his rattle and Mommy ain’t here to save him.”

  “Shut it!” Malcolm snapped, then charged and the wind in his gut was punched out by Barrett’s uppercut. He dropped his knees into grit and pigeon shit, air squeaking in and out of him like a busted tire being pumped. He tried to stand, and got a kick to the chest.

  “Stay the fuck down,” Barrett said, then turned to his crew. “I feel like hot dogs and hash. Let’s bolt.”

  Malcolm pushed his hands into the sick roof floor and stumbled back to his feet. “Fuck you.” It came out with all the strength and power of a crying dog.

  Barrett turned, huffing from the exertion of kicking Malcolm’s ass. “I said stay down, skid. Don’t make me regret showing you mercy.”

  Malcolm gulped air, snot running down his nose and over his lip so that each word was a salty spray. “Fuck you. Fuck Mercy. Fuck the lot of ya. I’m not done. Not yet.”

  Barrett looked at his gang, then Malcolm. “You are a waste of my time.”

  “C’mon,” Malcolm stumbled forward, wincing with the step and knees shaking, stumbling back toward the edge of the roof, wind and empty space at his back. “I can take it!”

  “Fucking freak,” Barrett said. “Open the goddamn door.” The Mohawk let go of the handle.