The Last Bender, Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

            On the way home I drank a half gallon of warm tonic water and twisted through the dial in search of something besides cooking shows. It took that and two aspirin dissolved beneath the torrents of bubbly drink to go over Clara Turback. She made some sort of a twisted sense. What seemed at first like condensed yahoo, opened up a bit when I thought about it. The things people cared about, like how to pen and ink a squid or what the produce manager at Baaldooch thinks of private meat inspections, were ridiculous. But it was some kind of a place and time, and people are like that. Clouds of pink particles engulfed speeding autos and precipitated on the old concrete. I raced against trucks and taxi cabs.

            There was a spot in front of my house. Maybe that happens twice in seven years. I pulled in and walked up the steps. Across the street someone dumped a bucket of sudsy water in the gutter. The air became warm and sweet, smelling of pine instead of fryolator fat and motor oil.

            The Roxeronil’s light was on. They sat at their kitchen table eating out of white cartons with chop sticks. I could just make out a postage stamp sized t.v. On the other side, Mrs. Stantborg sat watching tube in the dark on a crackling glint of plastic slip cover.

            The hallway smelled like cigarette smoke on clothes. It could have been the jacket on the hook by the door. Or even the clothes I was wearing. There was no noise. Nothing was askew. But still, the smoke bothered me. The kitchen was dark, but I could make out the metal legs of a kitchen chair poking an inch into the hall. Every door was open.

            It was time to leave. But then the board three in from the front door squeaked. The squeak had a beginning, a middle and an end. It was one of those squeaks that last longer than you do. It lasted till the light popped on and I was blinded. They slammed my head into the wall.

            As the ceiling reassembled, a shadow blocked my face and I rolled left, hooking one arm around his ankle. I pulled him down, stood and stomped on his crotch. He seized up into a ball. Then I kicked his face hard enough to knock him flat, blood spraying off my shoe. He got up and staggered around for a while, until he recovered enough to kick. Fuck that, you bastard. I grabbed his ears and twisted, till he was down. Then I banged his head against the floor, but it wasn’t hard enough to knock him out or kill him. I let him have it over and over again. He was all done. I put him down.  I stood there for a moment, tasting a sort of foul victory in my mouth. Then came the blow to the back of my head, followed by several sharp ones across the face and in the gut. I collapsed head first down my throat and into my stomach; I was swallowed by an agony so black, I died in it.