by Jeff Vrolyks
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Timothy was feeling pretty amazing, having just received his first kiss between two attractive girls who were finding enjoyment out of playfully teasing him, making a kind of game out of it. Nichole had his left hand, Jennifer had his right. There was one enchanting moment where both girls planted a kiss on either cheek in unison, then again at the corners of his mouth. Reversing his enchantment was the sudden realization that he was being intimate with Eddie’s girl. A totally uncool thing to do to your best friend. Best friend? Maybe it was a little premature to declare the word best openly, but that was just a formality: he was his best friend. “What about Eddie?” He said to Jennifer.
“What about him?”
“I… um… d-doesn’t he like you? Maybe he wouldn’t like you t-touching me like this, kissing me.”
“He asked me to do it,” she said and laughed. Her full breasts bounced in her fitted yellow sweater with each guffaw. Timothy couldn’t help but steal a peek at them. He felt ashamed at once. Had it been Nichole, he’d feel like a pervert still, but at least she wasn’t Eddie’s girl. Jennifer hadn’t seemed to notice.
He looked away from her breasts. What she had said that invoked her laughter had escaped Timothy due to the aforementioned sweater incident, but was absorbed just now. “Really? He asked you to kiss me? Why would—”
The barn door grated open on its hinges, stealing Timothy’s attention. That would mean Eddie had finally returned from having a word with Grandpa. He wondered if it had been a ploy to get him alone with these girls. He grinned at the thought. What a stinker that Eddie was. Telling Jennifer to kiss him. He wondered if he had told Nichole to kiss him too, and that was a horrible notion. He hoped she had wanted to kiss him on her own.
There was a cut-off chuckle down below. He got off the bed and stepped to the railing. The equally curious girls joined him in staring down at the dark bottom floor of the barn.
“Wow, he wasn’t shitting me,” someone said inwardly down below.
It was too dark to see who it was, but the voice wasn’t Edgar’s.
“How’s a stuttering fuckwad like you get two bitches?”
Timothy now recognized the voice, and an image of Max standing on the barn floor turned his stomach over.
“Niggers will fuck anyone, that’s why,” Max replied to his own question. “Hey dickhead, why don’t you come down here!”
“Max? Is th-that you? Eddie, are you d-down there?”
Nichole was the first to head to the ladder, but Jennifer was right at her heels.
“W-wait,” Timothy said after them. “What are you doing?”
Nichole glanced back at Timothy and her expression said it all. She didn’t care for being called a nigger and was going to put this little racist fucker in his place.
“No!” Timothy blustered and rushed to them. “Don’t, please!” He put himself between them and the ladder.
“Get your ass down here!” Max bellowed, coughed and spit.
“Please stay up here,” Timothy said to the girls, gesturing with both hands. “I’ll handle it, okay? Please.”
The girls nodded grudgingly and returned to the railing to watch this play out. Timothy descended the ladder into the dark. There was but one silhouette before the open barn door, large and unquestionably Max. Max, the bruiser who was big enough to be a starting linebacker on the varsity football team (heck, maybe he was), and who had kicked Timothy’s ass last year. He didn’t move as Timothy approached him. Timothy looked up to the loft and saw the girls staring down at them, their faces shadowed, expressions invisible.
“Max,” Timothy began, “let’s not d-do this.”
“Let’s n-n-not d-d-do this,” Max mocked, then laughed. “Just because your gramps digs blacks means you got to breed with them too? What the fuck, dude? It ain’t right.”
“Fuck you!” One of the girls shouted from the loft.
“Fuck you!” Max returned. “Why don’t your kind stick with the same?”
“How’d you like to see how embarrassing it is to get your ass kicked by a girl!”
“Nichole, please!” Timothy pleaded. “I’ll handle this.” To Max he said, “I don’t want to fight. Just be on your w-way, leave us alone. Okay?” He wondered where the hell Eddie was. How could this have happened?
“I’m going to fuck the one on the left,” Max declared loudly enough for the girls to hear. “Then maybe the one on the right. Yeah, that’d be just fine. Home in time to wash up for dinner. Never fucked a blackie before. First time for everything, I guess.”
Max turned and swung the barn door closed.
The girls weren’t angry anymore. Their dispositions had changed wholly upon that foreboding little tidbit. This wasn’t going to be a little scuffle, a little heated debate about race. No, this guy was prepared to commit the second worst of all crimes; hell, maybe after that he’d commit the worst of them, a double or triple homicide. There was only one of him, but he was a big corn-fed boy, a country bumpkin—a product of incestuous procreation wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities—and would lay Timothy out, leaving the girls to defend themselves against him. If he had a knife or gun, it would be over before it began. And guys like Max seemed to always carry some kind of weapon, such as a knife, Buck or switchblade or something.
It was Jennifer’s idea to call the police and it came at once. She stepped away from the railing and took the cell out of her pocket. Nichole nodded at her, as she surmised her best friend’s intention. Jennifer saw that she had a text message, from Eddie. It read: Hit the light switch by the ladder. DO NOT CALL THE COPS.
Jennifer showed the text message to Nichole. The two met eyes and silently considered their recourse. Nichole nodded, and crossed the small loft to the wall near the ladder and flipped the lights off. The barn was now swallowed by shadows, black as pitch.
“What the fuck?” Max said.
The girls felt their way to the invisible railing. All they could do now was listen to what transpired below. They heard the barn door creak open. It was dark enough outside now that the open door did nothing to improve the invisibility. Was Max leaving?
There was a surprised yelp followed by a meaty thud. There was lightning just then, blue-white light flashed in the barn through the open door and narrow gaps between timber planks. The girls saw a tangle of silhouettes, a fist being thrown before the barn returned to blackness.
“What should we do?” Nichole cried desperately to Jennifer.
“Just wait a minute. We’ll call the police if we have to.”
There was a half-minute of grunting and groaning and scuffling before it became silent, save for the loud rain. Jennifer used the LCD screen of her cell to illumine the way back to the light switch. She flipped it, bringing yellow light back to the loft, and returned to the railing.