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Friday Night II - Part One
Support pulseHEAD.com, and get some free money too. (THIS SPACE AVAILABLE)FICTION SUBMITTED BY Ess2s2 AT 2008.11.18 12:06 PM | VIEWED 162 TIMES
CONTENT
So there I was, sitting in a chair that was entirely uncomfortable and hoping I would see another sunset. The man in front of me was turned towards a table and although I didn?t know what he was doing, what he had been doing to me for the past hour or so didn't leave me with any warm fuzzy feelings. The only thing worse than being tortured, in my humble estimation, is being tortured over information you honestly don't know. It's a horrible catch-22, you don't know what they want you to tell them, so you understand you shouldn't be getting beaten, but because you don't know, you are actually being beaten harder. The logical part of your brain recoils at the sick irony of the entire situation as your body recoils from the galvanizing pain. Fuck, the pain?you never imagined the body could feel such pain. You envy those weak-ass fucks who fall out at the sight of a needle, and you can't even pass out when the big monkey man cuts your pinkie toe off and tucks it over your ear like a cigarette. The grim connection makes a guy want to quit smoking...Almost.
*
The cop had had all the warmth of a cancerous tumor, smiling like a jackal as he left that envelope in the interrogation room with me. I'd always felt an absence of free will in police stations, something about the control points, cells, restraints, and booking processes that imposed an environment of helplessness. I've never tried to look at it from the cop's point of view, but from the detainee's, life is suddenly on autopilot, and the plane ain't going anywhere nice. So, as I sat at the table, looking down at the red envelope in front of me, a part of me felt as if I had no choice, that I was going to have to open that envelope one way or another. I pushed it around the table in a small series of circles, flirting with it, letting it tease at the edges of my mind. I was going to open the envelope, of course I was, but I knew that once I did, my life would change forever. I pulled the small, intensely red envelope to me, picked it up, and for a split second, wondered where Johnson was.
*
There was no denying it, my life was good. Hell, better than good, it was fan-fucking-tastic, I was sitting ringside at the Compton versus DeLeo fight, watching as elbows, knees, and chokeholds were traded in a wild dance of enmity. I had landed there by some amazing coincidence, having been selected out of a pool of roughly thirty or so other men for the honor of attending the fight. I watched, giggling like a little kid as David Compton, a bull-faced youth from New York landed a savage knee to the ribs of his South American opponent. The crowd all around me gasped and cheered, their combined voices turning into a soup of primal energy. I closed my eyes for a minute, soaking in the crowd's fury and excitement. The power of it thrummed through me as if I had been touched by the enlightened finger of God and I opened my eyes just in time to see Compton crush DeLeo's face with an amazingly powerful right hook. As DeLeo reeled back, trying to open some space between himself and his rival, I turned away from the official's desk and began to scan the audience behind me. I saw a hundred thousand faces turned up in wonderment, cheering, smiling, laughing, screaming, and cringing at the spectacle before them. A hand tapped my shoulder and I wheeled back around to see Ty, the man with the plan. He pointed up at the canvas and I saw that Compton had DeLeo on the mat and was punishing him with elbows, DeLeo was still fending for himself, but his nose and a cut under one of his eyes were oozing blood, painting his face, the mat, and Compton's elbows a rich red color. The audience was screaming louder than ever, cheering and chanting for more blood. I nodded at Ty and checked under the table for my rag and bucket. I was the blood boy and as soon as the round was over I was going to have work to do. Ty leaned close to me, over the din of the audience, he practically had to yell into my ear.
"The cutman's gonna work fast, although with the way Compton's goin' to town, he may have a lot to work up, the ref's calling this fight like he's on vacation. Don't try to be Mr. Clean up there, just spray, wipe and go. If anyone gives you shit for cleanin' the mat between rounds instead of after the bell, just point to me." I heard three loud knocks from the other side of the ring and pulled my shit from under the table. "That's ten seconds, least this thing's gonna go for two. Makes life a lot easier on you. The more rounds these fags go, the quicker everyone wants to get out in the end." I smiled at Ty calling these two monsters fags as I prepared to get up.
The air horn went off, signaling the end of the round and the ref finally did something useful as he pulled Compton off of DeLeo and sent each fighter back to his own corner. I pulled my bucket up and walked briskly to the neutral corner. Everyone in the arena was relishing in a sugar-high of excitement, feeding off each other's adrenaline and charging the entire building with bloodlust. I glanced back at the tiers full of people and saw they were all moving, throbbing almost. I ducked under the ropes and felt like I was on an island in a strange sea made of flesh and hate. DeLeo's corner was a writhing mass of people as the cutman, the fight docs, his trainers, the water boys and the physical therapists all made sure their golden boy was still ready to fight when the bell rang again. I hurried over to the spot where Compton had so thoroughly punished DeLeo and immediately pulled my spray gun from the bucket. The round card girl scowled at me as she dipped around me in her circuit. I ignored her as I scrubbed the quickly congealing blood with my rag before stuffing everything back in my bucket and standing up. I glanced over at DeLeo's corner and saw the crowd around him was thinning, just the cutman, the docs and his head trainer now buzzed around him like flies. I took one last look around the mat and decided it was as good as it got. I headed back to the neutral corner when a light out in the crowd caught my eye. I slowly ducked through the ropes as I tried to zero in on the light source. Just as I found the source, I heard Ty yelling my name.
"Hey dipshit, get outta the ring!" I pulled myself the rest of the way out and descended the corner stairs. Ty stamped up to me. "If you don't want your first gig to be your last you'll learn to work faster, and you'll learn to leave room for the card girl! I'm betting they would rather see her than the crack in your ass!" I nodded and gave Ty as sheepish a look as I could muster.
"I gotta take a piss, I'll be back in two shakes." I said as I pointed toward the staff exits. Ty nodded.
"Fine, just make sure those two shakes are for your dick, I don't need you in front of twenty million viewers with a piss stain on your pants." He clapped me on the shoulder and laughed. I returned the favor before trodding off towards the staging area.
As soon as I got through the double doors, I set my bucket down and pulled a key out of my pocket. Two rights and a left would take me to the employee lockers. I found locker 3027 and opened it. Inside was a large hardcase. I grabbed it, closed the locker and made for the stairs. Even from deep within the service area, I could hear the crowd cheering their approval of the brutality laid out before them. I smiled as I realized the Greek coliseums had never gone away, they had just been upgraded with fancy lights and cameras. I ascended the stairs and came out a few minutes later in the maintenance loft. I turned left and found an access hatch that led to the lighting catwalks. I opened it after giving a quick glance up and down the hall I was in. As I stepped through the hatch the crowd noise again became louder as I came out on a catwalk directly above the western balcony. Compton, DeLeo, and that piece of shit Ty were the size of my pinkie finger from my new vantage point. I could see the two fighters dancing around the ring and Ty glancing around impatiently waiting for me to come back. I kneeled down, sprung the latches on the case and grinned as I pulled out the two pieces of the rifle inside. I scanned the crowd for the light as I locked the two halves of the gun together. A fully loaded magazine was tucked into the foam in the lid and I grabbed it, checked it, and locked it into place in the gun. I found the twinkle of light in the fourth row and I finally pulled the scope out of its seat in the foam and slid it into place. I pushed the hard case out of the way and used the catwalk railing to steady my aim. As I looked through the scope and placed my target, I could see it was a small blue laser light on the back of a man's head. I couldn't see where it was coming from but it must have been close because the small point of light had very little shake to it. The head it illuminated was that of an older man, grey haired, and clean cut. He wore a sleek business suit and held the arm of a much younger looking woman. I drew a bead on the man, closed my eyes, then opened them. My crosshairs had shifted to the upper right and I corrected, once again closing my eyes for a moment before opening them and considering my target. This time my crosshairs were where I had left them and I took a deep breath. The crowd was screaming bloody murder as the two rivals in the center ring wrestled each other to the mat. I exhaled slowly and took another slow deep breath. I held it in and squeezed the trigger.
*
The big ape turned away from the table and I immediately noticed a sick smile on his face. I looked at his hands and saw a pair of rusty tin snips that must have been made in the nineteenth century.
"Well?" the lummock asked. It wasn't much of a question, but since he had been asking me the same things for the past hour, falling silent just long enough in between inquiries to inflict massive amounts of pain on me, I knew exactly what he was getting at. I shook my head.
"I told you I don't know. Work me all you want, I just don't fuckin' know."
"I love it when you say that, you know why?" Still grinning, fuck baby Jesus I hated that smile.
"Why's that sweetheart?" I asked, even though I very well knew the answer. I asked it because him answering was just a couple more seconds between the times he would hurt me. Fuck it man, I'd take what I could get.
"Because then I get to do this." He approached me slowly, brandishing the snips, opening and closing them with a clack each time the blades made contact. I had handled his torture pretty admirably up to this point, but I wasn't unflappable, and I hoped I could stall him a bit longer.
"Hey, hey, okay fine, you win." I stammered, not knowing what I would say next. The big guy stopped short, lowering the tool slightly. Did I see a certain degree of disappointment in his face? Yeah, I sure as hell did. I tried to think of something to say that would get him to back off a bit more, maybe call his boss and chat for a bit, talk about the weather, last night's game, anything. Suddenly his cell phone rang and for a couple of crazy seconds I thought he was going to ignore it, that he was going to do me up a little first and then call whoever it was back. Then he finally reached into his pocket, pulled out the phone and flipped it open.
"Yeah? Yeah. No. Nothing, not a word. Uh huh. Fuck if I know. Naw, he ain't that bad." I had to stifle a chuckle at that, even I didn?t know how bad I was, and my man on the phone didn't look much like a doctor either. He glanced in my direction then turned furtively away from me. "You sure? No, I mean if he knows, he's dangerous, if he doesn't he's worthless. Yeah. Yeah, I got it. Talk to you in a while." He finally put the phone away and turned towards me once more. Again, I found my mouth lighting fires I couldn't put out.
"Wife expecting you for dinner?" I would have smirked if my face hadn't been so swollen. He tossed the tin snips on the table and shook his head.
"Someone must really want you around. Can't imagine why. We're going for a ride." He remarked before walking out of the room. I tilted my head back and rested it against the chair, I was feeling drowsy and I thanked God for small favors. I closed my eyes and images of those rusty snips danced in my mind. I wasn't sure what he had planned to do with those things, but I was sure I was better off not knowing.
*
"Don't you have better things to do?"
"Not really, no. Why? Do you?" Dick.
"Actually, yeah, I do. This just so happens to be one of them."
"Whatever, it doesn't look that important." Monumental dick. "Let's go get a beer, what do you say?" He mimed a beer bottle by making the hang loose signal with his hand before tipping his thumb toward his lips. He was my friend and I liked him enough, but he was unemployed and collected SSI, which meant he had lots of time and just enough money to have to borrow more from everyone he knew. He was also a functioning alcoholic.
"Greg, I'm busy, I have shit to do and you probably have a government check to cash." I said this without taking my eyes off my work. I could see out of the corner of my eye the way his shoulders slumped in mock defeat. He made for the front of my garage then stopped and said the magic words that would make me follow him into a gigantic meat grinder.
"Johnson's gonna be there."
*
Johnson had a way of disappearing into thin air. For someone as large as he was, you would think this was a difficult feat, but he managed it with almost impossible ease. One moment you couldn't go to the corner store without running into him, the next, you couldn't find him if he had a radio tracker wrapped around his neck. The whole time the cops were interrogating me, they kept returning to the subject of my accomplice; who he was, where he was, where they could find him. I had a hell of a time trying to convince them that I actually didn't know, that Johnson wasn't an accomplice or even a real friend in the classic sense. Johnson was a guy I had known for years and had had occasion to hang out with from time to time, but knew surprisingly little about. Of course, tell a bunch of sharky cops that when you're looking at murder, kidnapping, and possession and see how long they can go without laughing or threatening you with "serious prison time."
I looked down at the small red envelope in front of me, left by the senior detective after he swept my file into the trash. Somehow I knew that the door to the room was also unlocked and if I walked out, not a soul would stop me. Someone had lifted that feeling of helplessness I'd normally felt in cop-shops and had replaced it with a feeling of uneasy optimism. I pulled the envelope toward me and flipped it over, working my finger under the flap and ripping it open. I pulled a piece of creamy smooth parchment out of the envelope and opened it, on the paper was a typewritten note. It wasn't addressed to me specifically, and had nothing more than a greeting, a place and time, and a farewell signed with the initials DQ. I pocketed the paper and picked up the envelope, it still had a bit of weight to it and when I upended it over the table, a small brass key fell out. On the key was etched the numbers 3027. I stood and slipped the key in my pants pocket before heading for the door. I wasn't sure what everything meant, but I knew I was going to keep the appointment on the paper, after all, it was only polite since the person to which the initials DQ belonged had somehow bailed me out of trouble. The least I could do was thank him.
*
Just as the trigger tripped the action, which kicked the firing pin into the primer on the bullet, I felt the gun shift as a groove on the stock settled on the railing I was using for support. The crosshairs jumped a fraction of a second before the gun kicked and I already knew the shot was fucked. The report rang out in the arena and I watched as a man three rows back from my target jerked out of his seat amid a fine red mist, I had clipped his spine, and if he was lucky, his heart also. I refocused on my target and found that he was now surrounded by no less than ten handlers, they were all clad in black suits, and they had already covered him down and were scanning the roofline. A second shot was definitely out of the question and I rolled quietly away from the railing. The crowd was no longer cheering for blood, they were now screaming in a full out panic and trampling one another in a blind scramble for any exit they could find. I tore the gun apart and used a rag in the case to wipe the prints off it. I snuck out the hatch and sprinted down the stairs where employees and spectators alike were streaking through the main hall. I dove into the panicked throng and applied my best scaredy-face as I ran for the exit. Soon I was outside on the West side of the building and I pulled my ring official shirt off as I ran with the quickly dispersing crowd.
*
How Greg could have possibly known that Johnson was going to be at the bar was beyond me, but I was willing to chance his intuition if it gave me the opportunity to talk to Johnson and ask him why he did what he did. Hell, even if he ended up stonewalling me, at least I would be able to tell him about the police station and the envelope. I left Greg sitting in the waiting area while I went and got cleaned up. When I came back out, my friend was reading a three-month-old issue of Cosmo and humming the Star Spangled Banner under his breath. I tried my best not to think about where those two thoughts converged in his head, and instead tried to think of ways to keep Greg's drinking on his own dime. I rapped on the plexi between the office and the sitting area and waved him up.
RATING: 4
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