Hello
Hello
Hello
I’m fine
I’m fine
I’m fine
I found a new way to save myself a few steps
going to work yesterday
You take a shortcut
through the expected things to do
and go directly to go
I found a new way to save myself a few steps
going to work yesterday
You take a shortcut
through the
Mister Redundant Man why are you so redundant?
Because
because
because
I have so little so much to say
that if I say is over and over and over
because
because
because
I have so little so much to say
that if I say if over and over and over
I will be sure to see it touch those folks
who look at me and show me arrived
that if I say it over and over and over
I will be sure to see it touch those folks
who look at me and show me arrived
Are you arrived then Mister Redundant Man?
I’m not sure
I’m not sure
I’m not sure
but I sure hear myself
listening to see
but I sure hear myself
listening to see
but I sure hear myself
But do you think Granma is going to take all these insults lying down. No. She’s got something better to kick than a dog. She’s got a doctor coming up and we know what they all deserve. Rounded up and electric prodded, corralled into devoted servants with no telephone or pencil of their own. Not at all immortal while the rest of us are left prescriptions waking us up for a sleeping pill and hopefully nobody is maimed. Reminds me, what do you say to God when he sneezes, Doctor bless you? Doctors should be rehabilitated thru community service making day and night housecalls 24/7 or behind a counter reading their own writing on absolutely nothing. Anyway, so what does Granma say?
“I really should write down what I want to complain about.”
I’m thinking what agitating people this woman and her immediate family represent although on the other hand, smart idea Mom. I should be working on my list too. Near the top are bank tellers behind bullet proof windows laughing and asking you to repeat. But her daughter pays no attention talking to someone on her phone.
“Tuesday night she is going . . . have you seen the dress?”
This is bedroom chatter, an insult to a yawn. Seriously. What can I do to show my displeasure? Please I am trying to watch the movie! Shut those dogs up! Finally she gets off her cellular. Now beat this, she turns to me and asks for the front page of my paper that I am trying to read. The gall! Of course I give it to her. I’d pull out my ID, show her a major credit card and write out a small check. What else an elbow in my side! Take my wife, please!? At your service ma’am. Next!?
“Don’t worry, Mother, everything will be fine,” Stephanie said, standing in the doorway of her home. “Danny and Kathy are already asleep, and I’ll be asleep soon. So please: go and have a good time.”
“Honey, we’re going to be late!” Frank shouted from the driveway through the open passenger’s door of his brown station wagon.
“You better go,” Stephanie said. “You know how he gets when he’s late.”
“If you have any questions, or anything happens, God forbid, call Aunt Mary,” Nancy said. “You know her number. She can be here in a matter of minutes.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Frank honked the horn as Nancy embraced Stephanie.
Nancy turned and shouted, “I’m coming!” She turned to Stephanie and said, “We shouldn’t be gone too long--just dinner and a movie. Now as soon as we leave, be sure to lock the door.”
“Yes, Mother,” Stephanie smiled.
Melanie Locay
I open my eyes. I have been awake for about two minutes. But I’m keeping my eyes tightly shut, hoping my new puppy Cossima, a Min Pin with a penchant for biting on my nose ring, will be convinced there is no waking me. She’ll just have to wait another measly fifteen minutes before going out to pee. Then she jumps on my stomach, pressing on my bladder, suddenly I realize that there is no way I can wait fifteen minutes before going to pee. Cossima wins. I get up. My happy go lucky, yet not very bright, Chihuahua Milo, who had been sleeping by my feet and could have kept on sleeping if it weren’t for this little German princess’s yapping, stretches and yawns. I coo to the little monster “Who is my princess??׆ and “Why are you so cute Cossy, Cossy, Cossima? But of course I can’t forget Mister Milo, nooo, whose mommies Milo? Who is??׆ I put the little ones on the floor feel around with my feet for my pink furry slippers and hurry to the potty as I remember my bursting bladder.
I’m sitting on the toilet, staring at my chipping toe nail polish in diva red, when I hear my cell phone ring. I hate the rushed wipe, pants around my ankles sprint out of the bathroom to get the phone, so I don’t. I know I’m getting old by the disinterest I’ve acquired in the phone. After I’ve taken my sweet time in the potty, I get to my cell phone, I see that the missed call is from my ninety year old great uncle, that lives next door, and is my responsibility while my mom is out of town. Immediate guilt washes over me. Oh god he’s fallen and he can’t get up. I start dialing but at the same time I rush over there. I’ve already opened his front door by the second ring. He’s sitting on his couch smoking a cigarette.
“It is 7:30am shouldn’t the dogs have gone out by now? “ He would also like his breakfast. Which he casually hints at by asking. “Won’t there be breakfast today?׆
I realize at that moment, that when my mom wakes up obscenely early, this is the shit she has to deal with. I decide one day, when I’m at Manolo Blahnik buying financial security level, I shall erect a statue in her honor. Hehe erect. I’m such a twelve-year-old boy sometimes.
By 8:00 am I have taken out all the dogs. The entire clan consists of the aforementioned Milo and Cossima, then there is another Chihuahua by the name of Lisa Marie, a Terrier named Westin (who adores my mom and I’m convinced plots against me while I sleep), and the incredibly lovable and terribly misunderstood Pit bull Miss Hanna. I have fed them, then given them their medicines, fed my uncle and given him his medicines, then double checked that I gave each their designated medicine’s, slightly wishing I had made a mix-up. My bed gladly welcomes me back for a few hours more.
“Well why don’t you get a fucking job and stop seeing that whore.׆ I forgot to shut my bedroom window before falling asleep. The sweet little old lady next door is giving her forty year old ex con son a pep talk about getting his life in order. It is a regular occurrence with the finale being the shattering of something. The Hallmark moment I’m being privy to is suddenly drowned out, when my dogs go into the Monday through Saturday concerto of “I want to eat the goddamn mailman׆, acted out in acrobatic jumps at the window.
My admirers/owners of my soul sent their usual love notes: Capital One, Providian, Discover etc. The seductress in the small stack of correspondence, the Victoria’s Secret catalog, I’ll put aside so I can slit my wrist later. As I’m turning to close the front door I see it there on the porch, glistening in its plastic wrap. The mailman must have not been able to make it fit in my box. He couldn’t fit his package in my box, oh man hahaha!! Thank god people can’t read my thoughts.
I leap for the package, clutch it against my chest, like that dude in that dork movie talking about his precious. The Abercrombie and Fitch catalog is my porn. It has confirmed all my theories that hot men do play football naked together! The phonebook- sized catalog is art, consisting of naked gorgeous men frolicking, with the clothes hanging on a nearby branch. The second half is overpriced clothes sans the models, sometimes there is the occasional cute shirt.
As I tear into the plastic with my teeth. Germs mean nothing in this moment of high anticipation. I feel like a child whose been told Santa doesn’t exist then kicked in the teeth. The fucking catalog only has clothes in it. Should I call them and tell them there has been a horrible mistake? Should I chase down the mailman, in my pink fuzzy slippers, accusing the middle aged man of stealing my hot naked men? I turn on the TV and as soon as I see his face it all makes sense. This is a puritanical country run by a moron and this mockery of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog is a clear example of that.
My afternoon is filled with picking up dog toys, cleaning the house, giving my uncle his lunch and afternoon snack, going to the liquor store to get what the Surgeon General protest to, but seem to work as an anti-aging serum for him, Bacardi and cigs. I decide to wear my pink fuzzy slippers to the liquor store. After all, what do I care? The place is a block away, often times half the people in there are wearing curlers or hairnets, no matter their sex. I want to buy a lottery ticket but I feel a bit embarrassed. I heard one of those slick, hip comedians on Vh-1 talking about how only trash buy lottery tickets. Freeze frame, I have a carton of cigarettes in one hand, a gallon of rum in the other and I’m wearing pink fuzzy slippers, at the neighborhood liquor store, where half naked small children with Kool-Aid mustaches run in and out. I buy the lottery ticket.
I get home and my uncle wants back his exact change, all 44 cents of it. I hand it to him give him a kiss on his wrinkled cheek and tell him I love him. I’ve said it everyday sometimes multiple times since I first learned to speak.
I made it into a song when I was little “te quiero, te quiero tanto׆. I would go with him to work when no one else could watch me. While he scrubbed apartment floors on his hands and knees. I would dance around him and sing my profession of love. Telling him of my future plans of being a cop by day and a rockstar by night. Yea, I went through a dikey phase. He would tell me how I was going to do whatever I wanted to do with an education. He said he was cleaning toilet bowls so I would never have to. He never had kids of his own and paid for me to go to private school.
Now he opens up the carton of cigs, I’ve placed in front of him, like it’s a present. He gives me a smile and asks; “Won’t there be dinner today?׆
Aaron opened the door to his four-room apartment, staggered into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, and headed for the living room. He tossed two rented videos onto a small, beaten-up table, and one of the videos knocked over an empty beer bottle that rolled off the table and onto the wooden, stain filled floor. Aaron removed the cap from the bottle in his hand and flung it onto a pile of cigarette butts that hid an ashtray. He took a long swallow of beer, lowered the bottle’s mouth from his, and sighed.
He stood before a picture of Adolf Hitler taped to the center of an enormous banner of a swastika covering the entire wall. He saluted the picture while rubbing the top of his bald head with the bottom of the beer bottle. He smiled as he thought how grand it must have been to be a soldier in the German army during the Second World War.
He closed his eyes and imagined himself in his fantasy room. As always, the windowless chamber was cold, damp and dark. His nerdy boss from the meat packing plant, a Jewish man whom he despised, appeared before him. Aaron smirked devilishly as he drove his right fist into his left palm.
“What do you want from me?” the skinny man asked while stepping away from Aaron, who was moving toward him.
“Your kike blood in that bucket,” Aaron answered, pointing at an iron drain in the middle of the room.
“Why?” the skinny man asked. He was wearing glasses and a tie. “I’ve always treated you fairly,” he said, backing into a corner.
“It’s not about fair. It’s about purifying.”
“Purifying what?” The skinny man began to cry.
“The Aryan race. You’re a Jew. So, you see, your blood won’t suffice,” Aaron wrapped his hands around the skinny man’s neck, flipped him to the ground, then punched and kicked him until he lay unconscious. He nailed the skinny man’s hands and ankles to the floor crucifixion style, using rusted stakes and a rock as a hammer. He smiled wildly as he dug his finger into the side of his boss’s left eye and plucked it out.
Aaron shook his head from side to side and awoke from the daydream. “Holy shit,” he laughed, rubbing his groin through his blue jeans. “I was gettin’ a fuckin’ hard on.”
He dropped himself into a tattered chair beside the small table. He placed his beer on the table and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back jeans pocket. He slid a cigarette out of the pack and lit it with a match that had been lying on the table. He flung the match and the pack of cigarettes onto the table, then fished for the remote wedged between the cushion and the side of the chair. He aimed the remote at the TV, pressing “POWER.” He flipped through all ninety-seven channels but found nothing of interest. He extinguished his cigarette in the ashtray, forcing bottle caps and butts onto the table. He glanced up at the videos and remembered the clerk saying to him, “This video comes free with every rental today.”
The video he had rented was Schindler’s List, a movie he would watch on occasion for a good laugh. If it’s free, it’s gotta be shit, he thought as he picked up the untitled video and opened the case. The tape itself was also untitled. “What the fuck?” he said rising to his feet. He shoved the tape into the VCR and returned to the chair. He threw the empty video box onto the table, almost pushing off The Turner Diaries, his bible.
He snatched his beer from the table and took a drink. The first images from the video appeared on the screen. Lowering the bottle from his lips, he saw a picture of Adolf Hitler slowly materialize. “No fuckin’ way!” he shouted, and he glanced at the picture of Hitler that hung on his wall. It was the same photo. A deep voice roared from the speakers as the picture of Hitler grew on the screen:
“It is time for one Aryan race, a time without the filth of Jews, the ignorance of niggers and the stupidity of Spics. It is a time where faggots are hung before the innocent, a time where the straight white male rules the world. The time is now.”
The screen turned to black. Then four German soldiers appeared on it. They were hacking limbs off dozens of Jewish women with machetes. Blood from severed arms, legs and heads spit in every direction. “Chop them bitches up!” Aaron shouted as he leapt up from his chair with his fist in the air. Three of the soldiers toasted each other on a job well-done while the fourth, in the distance, kicked a Jewish woman in the head with the heel of his boot. When her struggling ceased, he ripped his gun out of its holster and shot her twice in the back of the head. As he returned the gun to its holster, he looked at the TV screen, smiled, and motioned Aaron to join him. Wishing it were possible, Aaron smiled sadistically. As the soldier in the distance drew his knife from his belt, the screen blackened.
“What the fuck?” Aaron shouted. He jumped out of the chair and pounded the side of the TV with his fist. “It was just gettin’ good.” He placed his beer on the table and picked up the remote for the VCR. He pressed the fast-forward button, but nothing happened. He pushed the stop button, but the tape continued to play. After checking the remote for batteries, he tapped each button with his middle finger. He punched the remote with his fist, then smashed it against the wall.
As he approached the TV, a white circle appeared in the center of the black screen. He stopped and said, “What the fuck?”
“TO CONTINUE, PLACE YOUR HAND HERE” appeared above the five-inch circle. He pushed the eject button on the VCR, but it was as if it had captured the tape and wasn’t allowing it to escape.
Sliding his hand down the front of his face, he retrieved his beer from the table. He stood in front of the TV and stared at the dark screen, wondering what the soldier in the distance was doing to the woman with his knife. “Can’t hurt to try,” he said, and he took a long swallow of beer. “This better fuckin’ work,” he said, placing his open palm against the white circle.
When his hand met the screen, the entire room was filled with an intense light. He closed his eyes and turned his head away from it. He tried to pull his hand free, but it was attached to the screen. “Let me go, mother fucker!” he shouted as he kicked the base of the TV. A jolt of electricity shot up his arm and through his body, as if he were plugged into a socket. Every muscle tightened and his teeth and eyes clinched together, and he gasped for air.
As the electricity subsided, his muscles relaxed. He began to pant heavily. He opened his eyes and found himself standing beside the soldiers from the video. “I must be fuckin’ dreamin’,” he whispered as the soldier beside him lifted his bottle toward him. Surprised to find the bottle still clinched in his hand, Aaron toasted the soldier and swigged the remaining beer from his bottle. “This ain’t beer,” he coughed, and he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. It was vodka. “And this ain’t my shirt,” he said, looking down at himself. He was dressed exactly like the soldiers he was standing beside. “Fuck yeah!” he shouted, and he flung the empty bottle onto the pile of dismembered bodies before him.
Feeling something tugging at his leg, he looked down and saw a bloody Jewish woman pulling his cuffed pants. Her left hand and right leg had been severed off.
“Please, please end my suffering,” she begged. “I can take no more.”
To free himself from her grip, he kicked her in the face. “How dare you touch me, you dirty whore,” he said as he unbuckled the strap to the knife at his side. He bent over, grabbed her by her hair, and thrust the knife into her eye socket. She screamed and flopped about as he slid the knife in and out. The soldier, who stood in the distance, ran to them, knelt next to the woman, and helped another soldier restrain her by her shoulders. The other two soldiers cheered as Aaron sat on her chest and spat on her face. “Let’s see you try to touch me now, bitch,” Aaron said, and he sliced off one of her fingers.
A German general approached them, ordered one of the two on-lookers over to him, and handed him a folder. Aaron continued to slice off the woman’s remaining fingers as the general barked at the soldier. Aaron cut open the front of her shirt and slid the knife across her breasts. As he thrust the knife into her chest, he was pushed from behind and fell onto her. “What the fuck?” he said, pushing himself off of her. “Why don’t you watch what the fuck you’re doin’?” he asked as he turned around.
The soldier, who was summonsed by the General, kicked Aaron in the face, knocking him unconscious.
As Aaron awoke, he could hear faint voices shouting at each other in the distance. He was lying down, nude. He tried to sit up, but his hands were restrained above his head. He attempted to stand, but his legs were tied to the ground. “What the fuck’s goin’ on here?” he shouted as he struggled to escape. Like a fish trying to shake loose from a hook, he flopped around on the floor until he fell limp with exhaustion. Breathing heavily, he stared at the concrete ceiling and noticed the room he was in was eerily similar to the one he created in his daydreams. It was cold, damp and small--but it had one window reinforced by steel bars.
Five German soldiers entered the room through the lone metal door. They all looked the same to Aaron. Two stood on each side of him while the one who had kicked him in the face stood between his spread legs.
“What’s goin’ on here?” Aaron asked. “Is this a fuckin’ joke or what?”
“Admit it and your death will come quick!” the soldier between his legs demanded. He was holding the folder that the general had given to him.
“Admit what?”
“Admit you are a Jew!”
“A Jew?” Aaron laughed. “You think I’m a fuckin’ Jew?”
“Your great grandmother was a Jew!” the soldier shouted. “Admit it!” He drove the heel of his boot into Aaron’s groin.
“My great grandmother?” Aaron choked. “You got me mixed up with someone else. I’m one of you. I hate Jews.”
One of the soldiers to Aaron’s left spit on his face and growled, “You are not one of us! You are the dirt at Satan’s feet.”
“Admit it!” the soldier between Aaron’s legs shouted.
“I swear I’m not a Jew,” Aaron pleaded. “I don’t even know the bitch.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you have Jewish blood running through your veins.”
The soldier standing between his legs pulled out a knife and said, “I gave you a chance. Now your death will come slowly.” He handed the folder to a soldier beside him, sat upon Aaron’s lower stomach, and waived the knife in his face.
Aaron closed his eyes tightly and cried, “This isn’t real. It’s a dream. It’s a fuckin’ dream.” Feeling the cold blade slide into his chest, he opened his eyes and shouted, “This ain’t no fuckin’ dream!” He attempted to buck the soldier off of him, but that made the blade cut deeper. He tried his best to lie still while the soldier carved into his chest.
The soldier stood and spat on Aaron’s face. “Dirty Jew, portraying yourself as a German soldier. You make me sick.” He handed the knife to a tall soldier to his right.
Aaron looked down and saw the word Jew was carved into his chest.
The soldier with the knife knelt beside Aaron and sliced his swastika tattoo off of his left shoulder. He waived the severed flesh over Aaron’s face and laughed.
Slowly blacking out, Aaron could hear his blood run through a drain beneath his back and drip into a bucket.
Aaron woke as he felt his nose being crushed. The soldier who had toasted him earlier was alone with him, standing above Aaron’s head, smoking a cigarette. He removed his boot heal from Aaron’s nose and flicked an ash onto his face. He dropped to the floor and kneed Aaron’s head. He took a long drag from his cigarette and spread Aaron’s left eye open with his fingers.
“Please don’t! Stop!” Aaron pleaded.
The soldier pressed the hot cigarette into Aaron’s eye, which sizzled and snapped. Aaron screamed as tears mixed with ash dripped down the side of his face.
The soldier rose to his feet and stood between Aaron’s legs. He chuckled as he freed his knife from its holster and crushed Aaron’s testicles with the heel of his boot. He bent over, grabbed Aaron’s testicles, and sliced them off. Unable to bear the pain, Aaron passed out.
Gasping for air, Aaron woke. One of three soldiers who stood around him removed his hand from Aaron’s mouth and nose. Breathing heavily, Aaron pleaded, “Please let me go. I didn’t fuckin’ do nothin’.”
The soldier who held a gun aimed it at Aaron’s right foot and shot most of it off. He laughed as he handed the gun to a soldier to his left, who shot off the remainder of the foot. The soldier who covered Aaron’s mouth took the gun and aimed it at Aaron’s head.
“Go ahead! End this shit!” Aaron shouted with the gun pointed at his face.
The soldier laughed and shot him in the knee.
One of the soldiers poured vodka onto Aaron’s nude body. The alcohol burned like acid as it entered exposed flesh. Aaron wailed as the three soldiers kicked and stomped on him.
Finally, two of the soldiers left the room. The remaining soldier sat on Aaron’s shattered chest and forced Aaron’s lungs to collapse.
As Aaron struggled to breathe, the room seemed to close in on him. He closed his eyes and said, “Please let this be a nightmare.” He opened his eyes and found himself lying on the floor of his living room, feeling the full effects of the torture. Staring at the picture of Hitler on the wall, he breathed his last breath.
Jason T. Stahl
Tim Lloyd couldn’t speak. In fact, he couldn’t do anything on the ride home from Nilesworth but sit and stare out the window, revisiting the infuriating moments spent just moments before with his neighbor and traveling companion, Norm Stutz.
“Stop doesn’t mean saying ‘Stop!’ or doing this,” Stutz had said, holding his hands about a foot apart and pushing on an imaginary wall. “Stop doesn’t mean any of those things, okay? It means doing this, okay?”
Stutz then held his hands out, palms facing each other, and clapped them together. He’d then clapped them together again, and once more - to make sure Lloyd got it.
“Do you get it?” Stutz asked again, looking at Lloyd as if he were an expressionless monkey. “Stop means this (clap!). And I’m gonna tell you right now, if my Bronco hits the trailer, I’m gonna be pissed.”
It was at that moment that Lloyd thought he could have easily reached out and throttled Stutz, screaming, “Is this the way my hands are supposed to go? Is this it?” all the while watching Stutz’s face turn blue, white spit foaming out of his mouth. But all he managed to do was lose his patience for the first time that weekend.
“Okay, Norm, I’m not stupid,” Lloyd had said, watching Stutz amble off to the Bronco.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, just...” Stutz replied, waving off the matter.
Okay, maybe Lloyd couldn’t install drywall like Stutz could, or build on an entire new addition to the house, or waterproof his basement. But dammit he could write, and that was more than he could say for Stutz, who didn’t even have a high school diploma, much less a college degree. It had gotten to the point where Lloyd was afraid to say anything, in fear that Stutz would correct him and tell him how it really was. Cooking bacon wasn’t just as easy as throwing it on the skillet on the fire; there was a certain procedure that needed to be followed. Stutz had even had the audacity to ask Lloyd if he knew how to make grilled cheese. After making it for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the past three years for his five-year-old daughter, Lloyd figured he could do it blindfolded with his toes. He wouldn’t have been surprised at all if Stutz had sidled up to him in the men’s bathroom, peeked over at him and said, “You know, I actually hold it with three fingers and aim at the middle of the bowl so any unexpected splashing won’t hit the rim or the floor.”
So eventually Stutz asked Lloyd if everything was okay, because on the ride to Camp Gildik he had been much more talkative. Lloyd couldn’t tell him the truth, so he told him a half-truth about how he was generally a quiet traveler who preferred getting lost in his own thoughts than making meaningless small talk. The girls in the back of the Bronco were making enough noise for all of them, bickering over McDonald’s toys they’d just gotten in their Happy Meals. Annie, Lloyd’s daughter, and Becky were both five, so each of them wanted the other one’s toy, but neither were willing to trade. Whenever the arguing got too loud, Stutz had simply turned the volume of the radio up. Way up. And that was the way it was going to be. Both Stutz and Lloyd had agreed that they’d let the girls duke out their differences by themselves over the weekend, with only minimal parental intervention. They’d done a good job of that until Stutz told Annie to shut up, another thing that irked Lloyd. Why was it that, when Annie got too loud, Stutz could tell her to shut up, but when Becky came over Lloyd’s house and bit him on the shoulder, he was supposed to smile meekly, pat her on the head and say, “Now, now, be good, Becky.”
Quiet, at least in Lloyd’s head, was good. He enjoyed not thinking about much, scanning the blue stretch of sky in front of them with clouds that looked like cotton balls. Ohio’s Interstate 71 running north and south was known by travelers as the “Death March” since it was long and boring as hell, so about the only thing to look at was the sky or an occasional lethargic cow grazing in the distance. All of the young and supple flesh exposed by college co-eds at the camp site was something on his mind, too. At least that got him hard.
They were about one hour into their journey home, near Maunakee, when Lloyd spotted what he instantly knew was someone’s turtle cap lying in a grassy ditch off the side of the highway. People had different names for the giant container they filled with junk and tied to the tops of their minivans before setting off for vacation, and turtle cap was just one of them. Others called it the “hamburger,” or simply the “cap.” Lloyd’s parents had had one themselves, and he distinctly remembered his dad bitching about how they should have put it on top of the van first before filling it the brim with golf clubs and beach chairs.
“Slow down,” Lloyd told Stutz, his curiosity growing as the turtle cap neared. They were almost on it now, and now they passed it in a flash. “Hey, pull over!”
“What the fu--, hey what?” Stutz said irritably. Lloyd grabbed the wheel and jogged the Bronco to the right to give Stutz the picture, which infuriated Stutz even more. Still, he obeyed and crunched to a halt on the gravel berm.
“Hey man, this is my rig, and don’t you ever - ” Stutz started, but Lloyd decided he’d had enough.
He got within inches of Stutz’s face, which had an orange trace of beard after the night’s stay without a razor. Lloyd knew what he wanted to say, and it would have won as Oscar for sure, but all he could manage was to lift his forefinger and say this in a menacing monotone: “Not now.”
Lloyd jerked the handle of the passenger door and nearly fell out of the Bronco.
“Hey, where the hell are you going?” he heard Stutz growl, but the closing door cut the space between them. The stale air and contained music from the interior of the Bronco was now replaced with the smell of honeysuckle and diesel exhaust, and the noise from vehicles speeding by on the highway was deafening. Walking by the Bronco, Lloyd actually felt it rock against him as it was buffeted by a semi that roared perilously close-by.
The turtle cap lie askew off in the ditch, about forty yards away. Feeling suddenly out of place and ridiculous for forcing Stutz to pull over, Lloyd started jogging toward the forlorn-looking cap, hoping to take a quick peek inside, find it empty, and head back to the Bronco if Stutz hadn’t altogether abandoned his ass.
About halfway there, he doubled over. The overpowering smell of greasy rotted guts hit him like a roundhouse blow from a prizefighter, and he nearly retched. It was just his luck that some deer cut in half by a Chevy Suburban lie near this cap, like some kind of curse warding off treasure seekers. Hey, maybe that was it. Maybe Lloyd would find enough greenbacks in this “hamburger” to finance both his kids’ college educations. Or stolen jewels he’d take to some pawn shop as soon as he got back to downtown Cleveland.
Perhaps the smell of rotting flesh had gotten to his head, Lloyd decided, and plodded on. He knew the thing would probably be empty. And that would suck, seeing as though his new Timberlands were now covered with marsh slime and highway grit. At one point, he wondered if he might actually find quicksand in this godawful ditch.
“Completely stupid,” came Stutz’s barely audible words in the distance. Lloyd looked back, and the white faces of Becky and Annie looking curiously after him from the rear window looked like two untethered balloons. Annie, he thought. What if I get wiped out by some trucker hauling beef to Iowa, all because I was delirious enough to believe there was something worth seeing in this beat-up turtle cap. But he couldn’t think that, because now he was right next to the cap, reaching down to unsnap the hinges he knew were there because it was exactly the same cap his parents used to have.
The rotted smell had gotten stronger, Lloyd realized, and he could still hear Stutz yammering in the distance. One hinge snapped away, and he wanted to pick up the corner of the cap and peek inside, but he figured he should unsnap the other hinge as well so he could get a full, unobstructed view of whatever was inside it.
But that wasn’t necessary. As soon as he opened the lid about a foot the smell hit him like a freight train, and his fingers slid into soft, decomposing flesh, and he thought if he were lucky he’d look in and see a deer some hunter had been hoping to bring home and make venison stew out of, but he wasn’t so lucky, it was a family of four, mom, dad, son, daughter, and their all-American look was now tainted by squirming maggots and black-green flesh.
Lloyd dropped the cap lid and made a noise he’d never heard himself make, a gibbering squawk that sounded anything but human. He landed square on his ass, and when he tried to get up, his feet found no purchase and slipped in the muck. When he did manage to stand up, he turned around, expecting to see the Bronco and Stutz inside the car trying to placate the girls. Instead, he saw a dull black sedan that looked like it had been left in an oven for ten years, parked just behind the Bronco. That didn’t stop him from continuing his mad dash to the Bronco, but the sight of two fat men holding pistols getting out of the black car did. There are some vague things in life, things whose meanings are puzzled over for centuries, first under the stars of some prehistoric night, then in some corporate board room in New York City. But this was not one of them. It was crystal clear to Lloyd why these men were here, that it was their turtle cap that had accidentally fallen off their ugly black car, and now they had to kill their fifth person of the day because he had most certainly seen the contents of the turtle cap. Lloyd perhaps thought these men would stuff him in there with the four other greasy corpses, and the thought made him projectile vomit into the weeds.
Lloyd had a feeling Stutz knew what was going on too, because the Bronco suddenly lurched forward, spraying gravel so that it ta-tinged off the black car. Lloyd could make out Stutz’s wild eyes in the rearview mirror, and Annie’s panicked red face as she watched her daddy being deserted and left in the hands of killers. A lot of good it does to know how to install drywall now, Lloyd thought amusedly, and he was surprised he could actually think that way while staring death straight in the face.
The two men were on him now, and he noticed one looked like Kid Rock while the other looked like Odd Job from the James Bond movie, “Goldfinger.” With all the traffic, he was quite sure they would first drag him into their car, then shoot him, but he wasn’t quite so sure when he felt both pistols press into his stomach.
“You shouldn’t mess with other people’s stuff,” Kid Rock hissed into Lloyd’s ear, pulling the trigger. A yellow flash, then Lloyd felt as though someone had stabbed him with an icicle, then had tried to stitch up the wound with a red-hot darning needle.
“Puh-lee -” Lloyd said, spitting blood into Oddjob’s face, and then Oddjob’s gun went off. Now, he didn’t feel anything. If anything, he felt like he’d just smoked a doobie the size of a cocktail weenie. And he remembered seeing Annie’s face in the back of the Bronco, a lonely white balloon bobbing up and down.
“Hey,” Kid Rock said, shaking Lloyd’s arm. “Hey now, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake -”
Lloyd awoke, expecting to see St. Peter but instead seeing Stutz’s hungover face scowling at him from the driver’s seat. “We’re home, man.”
Lloyd looked down and saw he’d spilt the icy remnants of his Coke on his crotch. I got stabbed with an icicle, he thought with a smile. Relief washed over him as he heard Becky and Annie’s voices tittering with amusement over what must have been Lloyd’s sleep-induced ramblings.
“I thought you said you’d drive some,” Stutz said, but he smiled as he said it, and it made Lloyd feel okay. “Next time, man. We’ll go camping next year again, and we’ll call it ‘02.’ Yeah, ‘02’ man.”
In the middle of the camping trip, Lloyd doubted if he’d ever go again. But it was really for the girls. And now he was feeling better about it. Maybe they’d take his car next time, and leave the precious Bronco at home. For now, the comfort of Apple Lane, the street where he and Stutz lived side by side, was upon them.
Jayant K Kamicheril
I work for a multinational food ingredients company, specializing in the buying and selling of farm produce. Our North American corporate office, with all the big honchos, is located in New Jersey while we, way down the food chain, are located in the middle of the picturesque cornfields outside the small town of Stoughton in Wisconsin.
Being from the spice coast of India, I take care of the spice part of our business. Helle, my feisty coworker, looks after the domestic farm produce. Both being commodity purchases, the demand-supply fluctuations made our lives akin to a roller coaster ride. Helle, coming from the Norwegian stock, harbors intense loyalty to whatever she did. Whenever things go wrong, a magnetic field descends on her, sending sparks if anyone got too close to her charged proximity. We blamed it on her Viking blood.
To make life complicated, late last year we changed our accounting system to a supposedly user-friendly format for all our remote locations. “Friendly system,” Helle remarked one afternoon and asked, “If we have friends like these, why do we need enemies?” Helle and I had to take the full brunt of nasty customer complaints. Each morning, before shipping out products we would call our corporate office to verify the system was OK and they would confirm – system normal. On most days after we had shipped and billed, corporate would call and say, “Oops,” triggering us to don our hard hats to go into fire-fighting mode. After several such snafus, Helle and I rediscovered the definition of the word snafu: “system normal, all “f*!@#d up.” But then life goes on. We did not exactly get used to it, like the Wisconsin winters, we just suffered through it.
Helle would always wonder how I kept my cool during stressful days, especially when someone in another office had made a mistake and the rest of us were suffering for it. She would often enquire why I never complained when things went haywire, or blame others. I would brush off her queries and point out, “I am from the land of Buddha, the Calm One, which makes made me Teflon-coated when the fertilizer hits the fan.”
Helle also noticed that in the middle of a crisis I would disappear for a short while and when I returned I would be composed and relaxed – ready to weather any storm. After a while she could not contain her curiosity and started asking me about this vanishing trick of mine. Finally I divulged my secret with the caveat that nobody else in the office should know of my stealthy weapon.
I told Helle the story of my father who worked for the British in East Africa, way back in the 1940’s. My father was green and eighteen when he moved from our tiny hamlet in South India to the British colony of Tanganyika, to work under the English speaking Brits. My father’s knowledge of the English language being very rudimentary, he would often make mistakes in carrying out their orders and used to get teased and at times even abused by the imperial officers. His normal rebellious nature would well up but he could not even vent out his vexation, as he did not know their language well enough. He would go to the restroom and scream out his frustrations in the Indian language of Malayalam. The muffled sounds emanating from the restroom would be incoherent to the rest of the staff except that the outbursts were interspersed with the names of some of his supervisors. He would come out exuding tranquility and go back to routine chores with a peaceful air. He continued this environment friendly spleen cleansing until getting full command of His Majesty’s – Queen Liz’s Papa, King George the VI – language.
Six decades later, in a rustic town of Wisconsin I would step out of my office to slip into a small clearing in the middle of the cornfield, insulated by the head high corn stalks. Taking a deep breath of the clean fresh air I go verbally berserk at the ones responsible for mucking up my day. This was done in my mother tongue of Malayalam, a language gifted with a rich vocabulary in this unsavory department. This way, nobody could comprehend my outbursts, not even the genetically modified corn plants. Then I would return to the office with a serene smile.
On hearing my story Helle just chuckled and walked out with a twinkle in her eyes. Next day, when I went to my usual opening in the cornfield, I found that my spot was already taken. Helle was going postal at the ripening corns with words coming out of her at mach-2 velocity and thundering decibels. Her stream of epithets was turning the corn ears red.
Will wanted to stay, but knew he had to go. He led Gina through the hallway of their two-bedroom apartment, reached the door, turned around, and kissed the hand of Quentin, his newborn son, who was cradled in Gina’s arm. Will reached for Gina’s open hand, and she squeezed it gently.
“Please be careful baby, and good luck,” she said, and she kissed his forehead.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be all right.”
She smiled and said with a tear in her eye, “I love you.”
He forced a smile and said, “Love you, too, baby.”
Turning the doorknob to leave, Will heard a soft voice behind him say, “Bye, Daddy.” It had been years since he’d heard that. He turned and saw his first-born son, T.J., standing next to Gina with his head rested against her hip. Was this forgiveness? If not, it was a start.
“Be good for your ma while I’m gone,” Will said, rubbing the top of T.J.’s head.
“I will,” T.J. answered and he ran back to the black and white TV, with a coat hanger as its antenna.
“I told you all he needed was time,” Gina said as Will opened the door. Hoping she was right, he stepped into the hallway and down the twisted staircase.
What am I gonna do? he asked himself as he ventured down the broken sidewalk of is run-down neighborhood. He walked slowly, head hung, both hands in his pockets. He was off to a late start and concerned about money: for food, rent and living. The little money they did have, Gina spread out for as long as she could, but now it was gone.
“Yo, Willie!” shouted a sharp-dressed man running toward him. “Damn, baby, where da fuck you been?”
“What’s up?” Will replied. It had been a long time since he’d seen Darrell, and he wasn’t excited to see him.
Darrell embraced Will tightly, tapping his fists against his back. Will reluctantly returned the gesture.
“Ain’t seen ya ‘round lately,” Darrell said, stepping away from him. “What’s been up?”
“Tryin’ to make them ends. Know what I’m sayin’?”
“Yeah, I heard you was lookin’ for a nine ta five. Given’ up hustlin’ and stealin’. Man, when I heard dat shit, I laughed my mutha fuckin’ ass off. I said ‘Will ain’t had no job his whole goddamn life, and he ain’t ‘bout ta start now. What da fuck he gonna do?’ Man, you don’t know nothin’ but hustlin’ and stealin’. Ya need ta stick wit what ya know. Ya need ta come back and work for me.”
“I can’t do that, D,” Will replied. Everyone called Darrell D. The last person to call him Darrell had ended up with a bullet in his brain.
“Tell ya what,” Darrell said, reaching into his leather coat pocket. It was mid-summer and too hot for a jacket, but he wore one every day. “First two are on me,” he said as he pulled out and displayed two vials of rock cocaine. Darrell was known as a shit-talker and a fast-talker. As a pimp, he sweet-talked his women, and, as a drug dealer, he smooth-talked his customers. He didn’t care if Will smoked or sold the coke. He knew that if Will took it, he’d be back for more and next time it would have a price tag.
“No, thanks,” Will said, stepping back with his arms in the air. Not long ago, he would have stolen for what was being offered to him, but he’d made a promise to himself and Gina, and he planned on keeping it.
“I ain’t sayin’ ya gotta smoke da shit, man. Ya need money, sell it. It’s a one-time offer, baby. Take it or leave it.”
“Yo, man, I got shit to do,” Will said, stepping back and dropping his arms to his sides. “I’ll check you later.”
Darrell shifted the vials from his left hand to his right and extended his right hand to Will, attempting to give them to him as they shook. “You take care now,” he said, tapping Will’s knuckles.
Will let the vials fall to the sidewalk as he pulled his hand away. One of them shattered as it hit the cement. As he walked away, Darrell bent over and picked up the vial that didn’t break.
“You ain’t gonna find no fuckin’ job, man!” Darrell shouted, and shoved the vial back into his pocket. “Ain’t nobody gonna hire no dirty ass, ex-fuckin’-con for nothin’ but cleanin’ up shit.”
Will continued to walk away, but Darrell shouted louder.
“Ya know, I can always put Gina’s fine ass ta work. I bet she could make a nigga a hell of a lot a money. Why don’t ya try dat shit? I heard she can suck da fuck out a dick.”
Will spun around and charged Darrell. Darrell lifted up the back of his jacket and pulled out a gun he’d tucked against the small of his back. Before he could aim it, Will tackled him, and gun hit the cement and slid into the street.
“Git da fuck off me!” Darrell shouted. Will sat on his chest and kneed his arms. “I was just fuckin’ wit ya, man, now get da fuck off!”
Will wrapped his hands around Darrell’s neck and squeezed. “If you go near her, I’ll rip your fuckin’ head off. Got it?”
“I was just playin’,” Darrell choked.
“I don’t fuckin’ play that shit,” Will said, releasing his neck. As he got up, Darrell rolled toward the curb to retrieve the gun, but Will kicked him in the face.
“You’re fuckin’ dead!” Darrell shouted as he rolled around on the sidewalk, holding his nose with both hands.
“I’ll just have to see to it that it ain’t you who kills me,” Will said, picking up the gun. He pointed it at Darrell’s head and kicked him in the stomach. “But you ain’t fuckin’ worth it.” He turned on the safety, hid the gun under the back of his shirt and continued down the street.
“Fuck you!” Darrell shouted. “I know where you fuckin’ live! I fuckin’ promise you I’ll....fuck!” His voice was replaced with laughter.
Will turned around and saw two crack-heads stomping on Darrell, who flopped around like a fish out of water. While Darrell lay face-down on the ground, one crack-head took his jacket and shoes, then searched his pants pockets. The other brought over a brick from the alley and slammed it against Darrell’s head.
Will felt neither sorrow nor pleasure from the murder of Darrell. It just was.
An hour into his journey for employment, Will found a “Help Wanted” sign in the window of a grocery store a few miles east of his neighborhood. He entered the store and headed for the nearest cashier, who was hard at work scanning groceries for a young couple. “Excuse me, who do I talk to about the job?”
Without looking up from her register, she pointed behind him and said, “Him.”
“The guy in the clown tie?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks,” he said and walked over to the short, balding man who was bagging a variety of canned soups for an elderly woman. “Excuse me. I’d like to apply for the job.”
“Sure, give me one second,” the man said, and he continued to bag a head of lettuce and a dozen apples. He placed the woman’s bag in her cart, turned to Will, and said, “Follow me,” then led Will down an aisle of baby food and diapers to the employee breakroom at the rear of the store. “Have a seat and I’ll be right back with an application.”
“Is it possible to have an oral interview?” Will asked.
“Applications are mandatory. Have a seat and I’ll be back.”
Will sat down at one of two banquet tables. A redheaded kid was seated at the other. The gun slid up Will’s back as he leaned forward. “So what job are we applyin’ for?” he asked the kid. He reached around and pushed down the gun.
“Bagger,” the kid answered without looking up from his application.
The store manager returned and handed Will an application. “Here you go. Bring it to me at the front of the store when you’re finished.”
The redheaded kid stood. “I’m finished.”
“Already?” the manager said, taking his application. “All right, follow me.”
Will felt like he was back in school. The teacher and smart kid had left him alone to fail the test. He stood and grabbed the pencil the redheaded kid had left behind. He returned to his seat, holding the gun against his back and thought, Oh well, here goes nothin’.
Heading for the exit at the front of the store, Will saw the redheaded kid wearing a white apron and bagging groceries. Figures, Will thought, leaving the store. He twisted the application into a ball and threw it into a garbage can that was next to the door. Not far from the exit, he accidentally bumped into and knocked down a short, overweight woman. “My fault,” he said as he reached his hand down to help her up.
“No, no, don’t hurt me,” she cried, with a thick German accent. “I have nothing.”
Will paused for a moment, noticing she was wearing a diamond ring and pearl earrings. He reached down to grab her purse, which she was gripping tightly with both arms.
“Hey you!” the store manager shouted from the doorway of the store. “Get away from her!” He ran toward Will and the woman.
“Shit!” Will shouted, and he ran around the corner of the store. When he crossed the street, he slowed down and began to walk. He came upon a gas station, about a mile east of the grocery store. He went inside and patiently waited behind a small boy who was buying candy and chips. “You got any job openings?” Will asked the plain-looking female cashier as the boy ran around him.
“Not right now,” she answered, chewing gum.
“You mind if I pump gas for tips?”
“You can’t do that. We have a no loitering policy here.”
As Will stepped off the curb and into the street, with his head hung low, he heard Gina’s voice repeat over and over in his head, “I love you.” When he reached the center of the street, a loud screech hissed out to his left and he was pushed to his knees. He leapt up as quickly as he went down and saw his assailant was inside a black BMW.
The man inside the car leaned on his horn and shouted out the window, “What are you, crazy? Watch where the hell you’re going!”
Surprised he wasn’t hurt, Will stumbled toward the sidewalk. As soon as he was out of the BMW’s way, it sped off down the street.
The man inside the car bent over and retrieved his cell phone from beneath his seat. A soft voice on the line shouted, “Joseph? What’s going on? Is everything OK? Hello?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“What happened?”
“Some idiot thought he had a bumper on his ass and walked in front of my car without looking.”
“You didn’t hit him, did you?”
“No,” he laughed. “He got away.”
“Joseph!” the woman said as if she were scolding a child.
“I’m kidding. So why did you page me?”
“Why do you think? Ted just left for Florida and the girls don’t get dropped off ‘til seven. Got time?”
“I can make time,” Joe said, and he looked at his watch. “See you in ten minutes.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Joe hung up and dialed another number.
“Hello, Thomas residence,” a young voice answered after two rings.
“Hi, princess. How is your day?”
“Fine.”
“That’s good. Can I talk to Mommy?”
“Yep,” she answered. “Mommy, Daddy on the phone!”
“Hi, honey. I was just thinking about you,” Joe’s wife said.
“Yeah? What were you thinking?”
“I need you to stop at the store on your way home.”
Figures, he thought. “Speaking of on the way home,” he said. “I’m going to be late.”
“Ah, Joe,” she said. “I made your favorite.”
“So we’ll have a late dinner. I’m sorry, honey, but I have to get this couple’s signature before they change their minds, or find a different house. You know how it is. It shouldn’t take too long. They’ve already looked at it about three times. I have a feeling that this is it. Now, what am I picking up?”
“Brenda needs typing paper for her history report, and we need more candles for tomorrow.”
“Didn’t we save the ones from Tina’s birthday?”
“Yes, and if you were turning five, we’d have enough.”
“Ha-ha,” Joe said. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, we’re running out of milk.”
“All right, my love. Be home as soon as I can.”
Will wiped the gravel away from his worn jeans and continued down the street. Ain’t nobody gonna hire me, he thought. But I gotta do somethin’. He shook his head to clear it, took in a long breath of air, and released an extended sigh. All of the houses on both sides of him were cleanly painted and surrounded with picket fences. Damn, he thought. How long I been walkin’?
He felt uneasy and out of place, like a lost child in a department store. He had heard of this place, “rich bitch island.” Although it wasn’t an actual island, the one hundred residents could only be reached by one road.
He heard a car approaching. He wasn’t about to find out if someone saw him and called the police, so he took off running down the street. He turned down an alley and ran three blocks at top speed. In the middle of the fourth block, he gasped for air and leaned against a garage. As he slid down, the gun fell next to him.
He heard a door slam across the alley, forcing him to shove the gun under his shirt and slide around the corner. He peeked around and saw a middle-aged woman strapping a newborn into a car seat. After she drove past him in a silver Volvo wagon, he inspected the house she’d left and noticed an open window. Seeing no movement in any direction, he put the gun against the small of his back and ran to the open window. He pushed it higher, climbed up, and fell into the house.
He rose from the kitchen floor and stood still. He walked slowly out of the kitchen and into an open hallway. There was a dining area to his left, the front door to his right, and a staircase directly in front of him. He went past the front door and found a large room full of electronic equipment including a computer, a large-screen television, a VCR, a DVD player, and a stereo. “Damn,” he said softly, wishing he had a vehicle. He had robbed many houses in his day.
“Cash and jewels will have to do,” he said as he ran up the stairs. To his left were a bathroom and a child’s room, to his right, a teenager’s room and two closed doors. He opened the first closed door slowly and found a baby’s room. “Gettin’ warmer,” he said, and he headed for the last door at the end of the hallway.
He opened that door. “Jackpot,” he said. He felt like a child searching for eggs at an Easter hunt. He pulled clothes out of the dressers, shook them, and tossed them aside. He pulled pairs of women’s shoes off the closet shelf. He pushed aside a row of hanging dresses and found a safe on the floor. He tried to pick it up, but it was much too heavy. “Fuck!” He turned around, shoved the mattress off the bed, and ran out of the room and down the stairs.
On the second-last stair, he heard voices outside the front door. He saw the doorknob turn, leapt around the corner, and crouched, hiding behind the staircase.
Two young girls entered and ran up the stairs behind him, the eldest singing, “I hate you, you hate me. I chased Barney up a tree--”
“Mommy!” the smaller girl pleaded. “Tell her stop it.”
“Brenda,” a middle-aged woman said as she passed by Will, with a baby cradled in her arms. “Stop teasing your sister.”
“Yes, Mom. And you stay out of my room.”
Will pulled out his gun, raised it with both hands, and pointed it at the woman as she walked away from him.
“Mommy, Brenda pushed me!” the smaller girl shouted from the second level.
“If you two don’t stop it,” the woman said as she turned around. “Oh my God,” she gasped. “Please don’t kill me. Take anything you want.” She fell to her knees. “Please, I beg you.”
“I won’t hurt you,” he said, lowering the gun. He heard footsteps coming down the stairs from behind him, then stepped toward the front door.
“Who’s that, Mommy?” the small girl asked as Will opened the door.
“Go back upstairs, baby,” the woman answered.
Will stepped outside, slammed the door behind him, and ran.
“You think she knows?” the full-figured woman asked as Joe licked her nipple.
“Knows what?” he asked, between licks.
“About us.”
“No way. She trusts me. Besides, she thinks I’m working right now.”
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Trust her.”
“Crystal?” he laughed, looking up at the woman. “She doesn’t like sex enough to cheat on me. So, yeah, I trust her.”
“You don’t have to like sex to cheat.”
“What are you saying?” he asked, and he looked up from kissing her breasts.
“I’m just saying not everyone cheats for sex.”
“Well, tonight it’s about sex,” he laughed, and he flipped the woman onto her stomach and entered her from behind, something he couldn’t do with his wife, because it made her feel like a dog.
Will collapsed between two rows of tall bushes that bordered a vacant bank. Exhausted and out of breath, he lay on his back and placed the gun on the soil next to him. He placed his hands over his beating heart and tried to calm down. He crawled to a small opening between two bushes. After a car passed, he saw a convenience store across the street. “Please be alone,” he said, watching a blond, teenage boy he saw through the window.
Driving home, Joe rehearsed his excuse. “I sold the house and they insisted on signing right away. And you know me, I had the contracts with me, so it took a little longer than I expected.” He picked up his cell phone and dialed.
“Hello,” a nervous voice answered after two rings.
“Hi, honey. What’s wrong?”
“Where in the hell have you been? I’ve been paging you for the past half hour!”
Joe never had heard his wife use the word “hell” before. “I’m sorry. I left my pager in--”
“I think we’ve been robbed.”
“What do you mean, ‘you think’?”
“When we came home from picking up Brenda, there was a man with a gun in the house.”
“What? He didn’t touch you, did he?”
“He didn’t do anything. When he saw me, he ran out the front door.”
“Thank God. Are you all right?”
“Yeah, just a little shaken up.”
“Hang on. I’ll be home in about five minutes.”
“Did you stop at the store?”
“No, I’ll go later.”
“Brenda has to finish her report tonight, and she needs paper. The world doesn’t stop just because someone messed up our room.”
“Messed up our room?”
“Yeah, there are clothes all over the place, but it doesn’t look like he took anything.”
“What about the safe?”
“The police said he tried to move it, but nothing’s missing.”
“The police? Are they there now?”
“Yeah, when you didn’t call back, I had to call somebody. They said they shouldn’t be here much longer.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come right home?”
“I’m sure. Everything’s fine now. I just have some cleaning up to do.”
“Well, this settles it. Tomorrow we’re getting an alarm.”
“Joe, let’s not overdo it.”
“Overdo it! I’m not gonna let someone waltz into our home whenever they feel like it and wave a damn gun around at my family!”
“Joseph! Calm yourself. We’ll talk about this later.”
“I’m sorry, honey. I just can’t allow that. When I’m not home, I want you to feel safe.”
“I do and we are. Believe me, he looked more scared than I was. I really do doubt he’ll be back.”
“Well, I can’t take that chance.”
“Are you on your way to the store?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t forget: milk, paper and candles.”
“Got it. I’ll be home as soon as I can,” he said, and he hung up. “Damn it!” he shouted, slamming his fists against the steering wheel. “I moved to the valley to get away from this shit!”
Will watched the store and the sunset for about twenty minutes. All he saw was two passing cars and a couple walking their dog. No customers had entered the store, and it looked like there was only one employee. “Fuck it,” he said, picking up the gun.
As he stepped onto the parking lot, a black BMW sped past him and parked in front of the store. Keep going, he thought as he accelerated toward the door. Joe leapt out of his car and almost ran into the store. Will followed him. Joe ran up and down each aisle like a mouse in a maze.
“How’s it goin’?” the tall, pimpled clerk said to Will as he walked by.
Will headed for the magazine rack at the far end of the store.
“Do you guys carry typing paper?” Joe asked the clerk.
“You just passed it. Down to your right.”
“What about candles for a cake?”
“Can’t help you there.”
Will looked around, turning pages of a music magazine. Joe walked to the back of the store and pulled a gallon of milk out of the cooler. Will watched him from the corner of his eye and put down the magazine. They both headed for the counter, Joe reaching it first.
“Will that be all?” the clerk asked Joe.
Will pulled out the gun and shouted, “Back the fuck up!”
Joe stood frozen.
“I said back the fuck up!” Will shouted, pressing Joe’s chest with the nose of the gun.
“Please don’t kill me,” Joe pleaded, backing away from the counter.
“Stop and shut the fuck up,” Will said. He pointed the gun at the nervous clerk. “And you, take all the cash out the register and put it on the counter. And if you push that damn alarm, I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off!” He pointed the gun at Joe and shouted, “Don’t you fuckin’ move!”
“I won’t--I promise I won’t,” Joe cried.
“Faster!” Will shouted at the clerk.
“I’m sorry, it’s my first time,” the clerk said, his hands shaking.
“You look like you’re well off,” Will said to Joe. “Put all your cash on the counter. Slowly.”
The front door flung open and two police officers dove inside. “Drop your weapon!” the thin one shouted as he slid on the floor, pointing his gun up at Will.
Will shoved a pile of bills into his pocket and grabbed Joe around the neck as Joe tried to run away. Will pulled Joe in front of himself and used his body as a shield. The clerk dropped behind the counter. Will placed the gun against Joe’s temple and shouted, “Drop ‘em or I’ll shoot him!”
“Oh, my God,” Joe cried. “Please don’t kill me. I don’t wanna die.”
“Release the hostage and no one will get hurt,” the overweight cop said nervously, kneeling next to the thin cop.
“Please help me,” Joe pleaded.
“Shut the fuck up!” Will shouted in Joe’s ear. “Step the fuck back and let me outta here!” he shouted at the police.
“Just calm down and think about what you’re doing,” the thin cop said calmly.
“I know what the fuck I’m doin’. I’m tryin’ to get the fuck outta here. Now move the fuck back!”
Joe screamed, “I don’t wanna die!” and tried to pull away. Will grabbed Joe around the stomach with the hand that held the gun--and accidentally squeezed the trigger. Joe went limp and fell to the floor.
“Fuck,” Will said, looking down at Joe, who was clinching his stomach and screaming. Before Will could look up, his chest was filled with bullets. Will opened his eyes, but he couldn’t see anything. He tried to get up, but he couldn’t. His entire body was numb. He tried to shout out, “What’s happening?” but nothing came out. “Oh, my God. Am I dead?” he asked as he felt himself being lifted upward. “God, no. I can’t be dead. Please don’t let me be dead. I can’t be. My baby needs me. Give me a second chance. God, please, I need a second chance.”
The dense darkness that surrounded him slowly turned to light. He could see hundreds of people around him: people of all races. Some wept, some smiled with anticipation. Everyone was nude, but no one seemed to mind. They seeded like Adam and Eve were before they bit into sin: without shame or lust. As Will was placed in a standing position, the people around him began to fade.
A flash of light caused him to look up. An enormous outline of a human, without sex or race, stood before him. Will fell to his knees and dropped his head.
“For whom do you weep?” a thunderous voice echoed from the image.
“My family,” Will answered. “They need me. I need them.”
“Are you prepared to face your sins?”
“Yes,” Will answered reluctantly.
The image faded and was replaced with images from Will’s past. They were played in chronological order, from his childhood to his death. Everything he had ever done when he knowingly hurt someone, either mentally or physically, was shown to him, followed by its consequence. Each scene only lasted a moment, but there were many of them. He tried to close his eyes and look away, but he could still see the surrounding images. He covered his eyes with his hands but saw through them. When he saw himself push T.J. to the floor and slap Gina, he cried out, “Please, please make it stop. I can’t take it no more. Gina, I’m sorry baby. I’m so sorry.”
The images disappeared. The large image of the human returned and said softly, “Rise, my son. You will suffer no more.”
All of the pain and sorrow left Will’s heart, leaving him with an odd sense of peace. The image opened its arms and hugged him, as if it had regained a long lost child. With a renewed innocence, Will felt cuddled by the mighty embrace.
Looking down at his stomach, Joe cried out, “God, I’ve been shot! Somebody please help me!”
“Don’t worry--hang in there,” the thin officer said as he knelt next to Joe.
“Bill, thank God it’s you,” Joe said, dropping his head to the floor. He knew Bill from church and had sold him his first house. “Get me an ambulance. He shot me.”
Bill turned to the overweight officer and shouted, “Call for an ambulance!”
“Damn, this guy’s messed up,” the clerk said, standing over Will’s body. “He’s dead.”
“Yeah, he’s dead,” Bill answered plainly.
Joe coughed heavily and spit out a mouthful of blood.
“Come on, buddy, hang in there,” Bill said, holding Joe’s hand. “An ambulance will be here in a few minutes.”
“All I know is, I ain’t cleanin’ this shit up,” the clerk said as a pool of blood crept toward his feet.
The voices outside of Joe’s head began to fade until he could only hear his own thoughts: My God. I’m dying. I don’t want to die. I’m not ready.
He felt his heart stop beating while he was being lifted upward.
At least I’m going to heaven, he thought as he was placed in the standing position.
“Are you prepared to face your sins?” the image before him roared.
“Yes I am,” Joe answered confidently. He didn’t feel much remorse as the images of his sins flashed before him. Most of them he expected. The final scene was of his own death. He didn’t understand what he had done wrong. He was answered with his own voice as it echoed around him: “Get this nigger off of me.” Every hurtful thought he ever had was played back for him in surround sound. When it was all over, he stood in silence.
As if a trap door had been opened beneath him, Joe fell rapidly into darkness. He could feel his heart awaken and pump fresh blood through his veins. His mouth was forced open by an invisible hand. He tried to push it away, but his arms were held down at his sides. He screamed out as his jaw snapped in two and the sides of his mouth tore to each ear. His nerves were ten times more sensitive then they were when he was alive, so the pain was ten times worse. While what felt like a metal wire wrapped itself around the base of his tongue and sliced it off; his upper and lower eye lids were cut off. The wire moved to his lips and sowed them tightly together.
His fall ended on a bed of nails, one inch high and one inch apart from each other. They pierced his entire back, holding him still, with his legs slightly spread apart and his arms at his sides. As he was lifted into the standing position, a legion of screams echoed around him. A putrid stench came to him, causing him to fill his mouth with vomit. He swallowed it.
“My God, whatever I have to do to get out of here, I’ll do it. Please, please get me out of here.”
A thunderous laugh arose from behind Joe. Joe tried to turn, but his head was held straight by the nails. The voice roared, “It’s too late for that now. My brother doesn’t want you, so he gave you to me to play with.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t belong here. I’ve believed in Christ my entire life and did the best I could,” Joe said.
The voice laughed, “You fool. It’s not enough to believe. That would be too easy. You fucked up. Now your ass is mine.”
A creature more horrifying than Joe had ever imagined stepped in front of him. Its form suggested it could never walk, but it moved with great ease, its knees bent behind it as if its legs had been turned around. It had three long, sharp claws instead of toes. They scraped against the ground, screeching like nails being slid across a chalkboard with each long stride.
It stood face-to-face with Joe and hissed at him. It thrust out its serpent-like tongue and licked Joe’s lips, leaving behind a trail of saliva. It looked like a bat with a hundred pointed fangs, its eyes as red as fire. It had two horns, like a bull’s, on the top of its head. It unfolded its crippled arms and wings, exposing an alligator-like chest. Its three fingers moved like snakes and had nails that looked like spears. It thrust one of its fingers into the top of Joe’s head and laughed, “Allow me to play with your fears.” It pulled out a piece of Joe’s brain and slid it into its mouth. It looked down at Joe’s penis and said, “You won’t be needing that little thing anymore.” It bent over and bit off his penis. It chewed it into pulp, laughing in Joe’s face, then ran off into the darkness.
What do I have to do to make this stop? Joe thought. I’ll do anything. Just please, make it stop!
Beyond the many screams that surrounded him, Joe could hear scratching sounds approaching him. Rats of all sizes ran out of the darkness and onto his body. They feasted on his skin and flesh until they reached his bones. As they scattered into the darkness, his body produced more flesh and skin. A second wave of creatures quickly approached. Centipedes, roaches and large worms crawled all over him. The centipedes forced their way into his eyes, ears and nose, entering one and exiting another. While the roaches ate away his fingernails and toenails, the worms entered his anus. They journeyed through his intestines, to his stomach, burst out of his naval and then reentered his anus. The rats returned and devoured his skin and flesh. Joe’s heart continued to pump fresh blood, his flesh replenished only to be eaten over and over.
Joe’s house appeared before him. It was as if he were across the street and the front wall had been removed. The man who had killed Joe appeared behind the staircase, and Joe’s two daughters appeared upstairs. They all moved in slow motion. Joe’s wife appeared and walked past the killer, her son in her arms. The killer ripped the baby from her and shot him in the face. He threw the dead baby to the floor and chased Joe’s wife around the dining room table. Joe’s daughters came downstairs, but when they reached the bottom, the killer shot both of them in the chest. The killer tackled Joe’s wife to the floor and ripped off her skirt and panties as she kicked and screamed. He flipped her onto her stomach and entered her from behind. She screamed out as he thrust himself inside of her.
Joe tried to scream, “Get off of her you dirty fucking nigger!” but the effort tore his lips.
The killer slit Joe’s wife’s neck as he reached orgasm. Then darkness fell before Joe. As the scene began to repeat itself, he begged for it to stop, but it got worse--the killer raped both of Joe’s daughters before killing them.
Joe once prayed for eternal life, he now prayed for eternal death.
Will found himself among loved ones. His mother, sister, two brothers, three aunts, an uncle, ten cousins, his grandparents and many friends surrounded him. They all sang, danced and laughed as they held each other. Will turned around when he heard, “Daddy, daddy!” His eldest son was running toward him with open arms. As they hugged, Gina came to them with Quentin in her arms. They all embraced each other tightly--and forever.
what is veganism?
A vegan (VEE-gun) is someone who does not consume any animal products. While vegetarians avoid flesh foods, vegans don't consume dairy or egg products, as well as animal products in clothing and other sources.
why veganism?
This cruelty-free lifestyle provides many benefits, to animals, the environment and to ourselves. The meat and dairy industry abuses billions of animals. Animal agriculture takes an enormous toll on the land. Consumtion of animal products has been linked to heart disease, colon and breast cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and a host of other conditions.
so what is vegan action?
We can succeed in shifting agriculture away from factory farming, saving millions, or even billions of chickens, cows, pigs, sheep turkeys and other animals from cruelty.
We can free up land to restore to wilderness, pollute less water and air, reduce topsoil reosion, and prevent desertification.
We can improve the health and happiness of millions by preventing numerous occurrences od breast and prostate cancer, osteoporosis, and heart attacks, among other major health problems.
A vegan, cruelty-free lifestyle may be the most important step a person can take towards creatin a more just and compassionate society. Contact us for membership information, t-shirt sales or donations.
vegan action
po box 4353, berkeley, ca 94707-0353
510/704-4444
MIT Vegetarian Support Group (VSG)
functions:
* To show the MIT Food Service that there is a large community of vegetarians at MIT (and other health-conscious people) whom they are alienating with current menus, and to give positive suggestions for change.
* To exchange recipes and names of Boston area veg restaurants
* To provide a resource to people seeking communal vegetarian cooking
* To provide an option for vegetarian freshmen
We also have a discussion group for all issues related to vegetarianism, which currently has about 150 members, many of whom are outside the Boston area. The group is focusing more toward outreach and evolving from what it has been in years past. We welcome new members, as well as the opportunity to inform people about the benefits of vegetarianism, to our health, the environment, animal welfare, and a variety of other issues.
The Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology
The Solar Energy Research & Education Foundation (SEREF), a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., established on Earth Day 1993 the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology (CREST) as its central project. CREST's three principal projects are to provide:
* on-site training and education workshops on the sustainable development interconnections of energy, economics and environment;
* on-line distance learning/training resources on CREST's SOLSTICE computer, available from 144 countries through email and the Internet;
* on-disc training and educational resources through the use of interactive multimedia applications on CD-ROM computer discs - showcasing current achievements and future opportunities in sustainable energy development.
The CREST staff also does "on the road" presentations, demonstrations, and workshops showcasing its activities and available resources.
For More Information Please Contact: Deborah Anderson
dja@crest.org or (202) 289-0061
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