by Black, D. S.
“Break time, Drew! Soda up!” Randy said, then spoke to his teammates through a headset. “He had some of that doo doo weed. Smelled like shit; sometimes Myrtle goes dry,” Randy Jackson said in his ever so confused white boy mimicry of Ebonics. “That nigga brought the goods, though. Real shit!” Randy said. He drew a long pull, and sucked weed smoke (that doo doo, yo!), and held it ... then exhaled. “Damn! That shit’s rockin! Like action muthafuckin Jackson!”
Andrew sat in Randy's bedroom, Randy's bedroom was part of a brick Georgetown colonial. The room was a large square box dedicated to the corporate rap industry. Four Kicker speakers, positioned in the four corners connecting the roof and walls vibrated Eminem. Downstairs, Randy's father (Doctor Harris, MD) and his mother (Miss Homemaker) watched Anderson-360 while drinking scotch (his mother drank a thirty-dollar bottle of red wine). Randy had been homeschooled most of his life. He was a smart guy, though he would never let you know it; some people had even suggested he might be retarded. Andrew liked Randy, the confused identity didn't bother Andrew at all. Randy's seemingly endless stash of weed (yeah, even that doo doo weed) proved a valuable asset, given Andrew's lack of luck with ladies; not to mention his lack of social standing within the community of Socastee High.
Randy's bright red carrot top, and landscape of freckles on his face, back, and arms only complimented a sweet uniqueness. Blue eyes glimmered around black pupils. Randy's well-brushed teeth smiled. Yes, Randy was OK, just fine with Andrew.
Randy prepared the Illadelph four-foot bong—while Andrew sat, nestled in an oversized bean bag, waiting for the weed to spark. Randy crunched up a purple and golden haired green nugget with a circular metal grinder. The smell was powerful, and mouthwatering when Randy opened the top, letting out the sweet aroma of crushed weed. “You up, Drew! Blast that shit to tha fuckin moon!” Randy stuffed the weed into the bong's bowl stem, then handed it over to Andrew. The bong was quite large, and had purple and green psychedelic designs up and down the glass. Andrew placed his mouth over the opening, put the Bic lighter to the stem bowl, lit the lighter, and pulled hard. The bong gurgled as the weed smoke went through the cooling water—
“Rip that shit, yo! YEAH!” Randy loved watching his friends take a serious bong rip.
Andrew sucked an insane amount of smoke into his lungs, held it as long as he could; his face turning red as a beat; then he blew it out in a spasmodic rumble of loud coughs.
After Randy had his hit, the two boys continued to play Left for Dead, and Andrew continued to suck serious donkey dick.
8
A soft shower was now raining down as Andrew continued to doze in and out of sleep. He didn't even notice when his line caught again; nor did he notice the crunching of leaves and sticks, and the dark shadow moving in the woods. In his mind's eye, he stood at a car lot. Rows of shiny new Hummers, red whites, blues, and blacks all sat shining under the early afternoon sun. “I sure appreciate this, Papa. I really do.”
“Don't mention it, boy. Just don’t fuck up my credit by defaulting.”
Andrew pushed the wheelchair over the black asphalt until he came up to a solid black Hummer. He'd been asking his grandfather for over three months to cosign a new Hummer for him. His grandfather had never said no, but never said yes either. Finally, the old man had smiled, slapped Andrew on the shoulder, and told him to wheel him to his transport van; they were gonna go get him a new Hummer.
“This the one?” Papa asked.
“Sure is. Black beauty, I been waitin so long!”
The Hummer shined from a fresh coat of wax. The wheels hadn’t been jacked up yet, but they were still large with silver chrome caps. The interior was gray leather. “All she needs is a lift kit, and she’ll be perfect.”
“We can add that in for ya, son,” a man said from behind. He was wiping mustard from his chin with a cloth, he wore a solid white button up shirt with black buttons. His tie was blood red, and his double chin hung over the crease of his collar. His stomach bulged out over a brown belt, and his pants were wrinkled black slacks. “Yes sir, you fellas picked a dandy all right.”
When the man walked, his large behind jiggled in his black slacks like cold gelatin on hot summer’s day. But it was sweet Southern spring, just over seventy degrees with next to no humidity in the air. Even so, sweat perspired through the car dealer's shirt, leaving sweat stains around the collar and under his arms. He was bald with only a few strands remaining, that he clearly took time to comb just right multiple times every day.
Andrew sat down inside the air conditioned office, and the man removed a small mirror. Andrew watched as the man brushed thin strands back into place. Papers were spread out, and pens handed over. Signatures were written, and Andrew drove off the lot with his new Humvee; not to mention a smile that touched ear to ear.
9
While lying there, the sun hot on his face, surrounded by the darkening world, Andrew continued to dream. He was back at Christian camp. He was only fourteen, and only now realizing what breasts were and that he enjoyed watching them bounce as the young girls ran by. He watched them jumping on the large circle trampolines while the much older, and muscled councilors showed them how to cut back flips.
His mouth always watered, but he didn’t dare talk. They’d never take him; Andrew had one good friend back in those days (two years before he met Randy Jackson and the doo doo weed).
Sally Fighart was his best friend back then. She was a tall brunette that ran on the junior varsity track team, but at the Christian camp, she just sat with Andrew, and watched the girls that had better breasts and firmer bottoms jump up and down. The large hands of the councilors assisted their back flips by pressing softly on their firm tummies and the small of their lower backs. Sometimes maybe touching a little lower than they were supposed to; what happens in Christian Camp stays in Christian Camp, so the campers loved to say. The eighteen and nineteen-year-old councilors had no problem with this philosophy, just make sure to pray for forgiveness.
“Look at ‘em Drew. Just look at ‘em.” Sally said.
“I am. I sure am.”
“Jesus. It’s all boys can look at. I mean fuck, just look at ‘.”
“I will keep on lookin, Sally. I promise.”
Andrew looked over at Sally, and for a moment he saw years of rejection on her face. She was nearly as mentally ruined as he was, and that was saying something. “You’re just as pretty,” he said and blushed red.
“Don’t even try, I know the pecking order. My mom says all that will change one day when I grow up. She says that those girls will develop into whores, and that nobody will respect ‘em after that.”
The sun burned like hell’s inferno. It was over one hundred degrees. Sally's complexion suffered miserably from the sweaty oil that stagnated on her face; she had a nest of pimples growing on each cheek. None of the councilors would be fondling her barely existent breasts this year.
Andrew rose up, and moved over to the shade of some tall oak trees and settled against the bark with one leg outstretched, and the other pulled into his chest. He stared out over a large green field of manicured grass. The smell of honeysuckle was not far off, and the girls kept doing their flips on the large trampolines.
Sally lingered over, and plopped down beside him. “When I grow up, my mom says I’ll develop large breasts and a lean firm ass.”
“If you do, let me know,” Andrew said with a smirk.
“One day I’ll be a star runner, I will have Olympic gold.”
“I believe it,” and he did. She did win.
Years later, he watched Sally walking across the Olympic stage, accepting her gold medal. He’d just got off work after a twelve-hour shift of watching machines cut metal with red fire tips. He was still in his work clothes, and stank of grease and sweat. He was now a twenty-year-old welder with a large Little Caesar’s pepperoni pizza sitting in front of him. Half the slices were gone. He lit a Marlboro, and smoked in the cancer. Seeing Sally smile had caused a tear to d
ribble out of his eyes. “I always believed in you, Sally,” he said to himself. He took a sip out of a can of Bud Light and swallowed his regrets down with it.
10
He woke up to see a light rain falling toward his face. Heaven’s tears crying for the dying world around him.
He forced himself up, and started the motor. How long had he been out? Hours? He looked down, and saw that his line had snapped; the rod now lay in the boat's floor. He let out a small sigh of regret, he'd meant to catch a lot of fish. He wanted to bring back a huge dinner—to make what was left of his family smile. At least help them forget the pain for a short while, if that was even possible now. It might just be an endless pain, endless suffering, endless regret; never-ending strife, iced over with the fact that they would all probably die in a horrible way, as the rest had. How did it happen any damn way? What happened to Papa and the girls while they were gone? How in Christ's name did Papa die, and end up eating them? Plateyes never even crossed Andrew's imagination; nor did any other supernatural possibility.
He guided the boat back to the embankment. Rain falling hard, much harder than before; lightening flashing, followed by Earth shaking thunder. He beached the boat, grabbed the cooler, and stepped out. “Better make sure these fish are good and clea—”
A sharp sting shut him up. He stumbled, he stumbled again. His vision blurred, another rock flew out of the dark woods like a bullet, and cracked him hard in the temple. He fell hard into the mud, knocking over the cooler.
A small crooked figure emerged from the thick brush. She looked as ancient as the tree’s themselves. She walked with a slight limp, and pulled a sled behind her. She grunted as she pushed Andrew onto the sled. She bound him tightly with dark bloodstained leather bands.
She pulled his thin unconscious body around thick trees. Thick rain blew against her sunken face and a hot misty fog engulfed them. “We be there soon, young man, very soon. Just a few miles in now, then you get to know. You get to know what real pain is.” She held the rope over her hunched, pointed shoulders and grasp the twisted nylon with both hands, digging her black rain boots hard into the Earth’s soft flesh. “You always had it all. Everybody always had more. Never me! Nothing for poor ole me. Just a beggar, that’s what I was. A disgusting beggar! Now you gonna beg me. Ain’t beggin’ no mo’.” A harsh wind blew her mud ridden hair, and her black eyes beamed through the mist. Her steps squishing into the mud, and she grunted as she lurked ahead, murmuring quietly to herself as she walked. “No sir! No way! No more! Not me! Throwing rocks at me, all people like you ever did. Now who's laughin?” She cackled, her black gums exposed to the damp air, only a few rotting yellow teeth showing.
Andrew’s body breathed softly, and jerked from time to time. The rain poured over his closed eyelids, down his cheeks and trickled against the sled. As she pulled him along through the dark Palmetto wilderness, Andrew's life flashed before his mind's eye.
He was at a grocery store. It was right after he, Jack and Candy rescued Jody and Papa from the nursing home.
He drove the Humvee carefully down highway 17. Death was everywhere; bodies of those that recently met the final death were being ripped apart by zombies. Sweat dripped down his face, and civilization slipped before his eyes. It was all happening so damn fast. He felt sick and excited; he saw a large yellow school bus. Kids screamed inside. Some of them had turned, and were tearing into the others. The face of a little blonde girl stitched into his mind that day, and never left. She pressed hard against the glass, and behind, two boys no older than nine, tore out her organs with tiny hands while she stared out of the school buses escape door.
But that wasn’t what caused him to bring the Humvee to a screeching halt. As he drove past the Piggly Wiggly, he saw a tall brunette running with fast even strides into the store; he knew those legs; he may not have seen them in years, at least not in person, but he'd know them anywhere.
“What the hell!” Candy screamed as he brought the Humvee to a fast stop, and jumped. He didn’t say a word or look back as he ran through the crowd. He moved fast around zombies that reached out, but failed to get a hold of his flesh. The store was cold, people screamed. The aisle dividers lay in the floor, knocked over like dominoes. He moved his head back and forth frantically, “Sally! Sally!” He didn’t see her. He ran down the bread aisle. Nothing, but a zombie eating the stomach out of a little boy. The boy was still alive, and screamed for his mother to stop eating him, to please stop eating him!
“Sally! Sally!” He ran past the zombie mother feasting on her son, and ran to the frozen foods. There she was, he’d found her. Oh god, please no... he was too late.
Sally Fighart’s body, lean and curved with muscle, pressed against a glass freezer door that once held the milk. Two dead men chewed into her. One pulled the protein from her neck in gobs of bloody muscle, the other looked as though he was humping her leg as he pulled long strands of meat from her torn skin.
In those last moments, Miss Fighart the Olympic gold medalist, the once breast-less and pimple faced little girl looked right at Andrew, and for a moment he saw her smile as the zombies munched into her. Her head jiggled back and forth, but her eyes never left his. From behind him, someone grabbed him.
“You’ve lost your fucking mind? You fucking shit tard!” Candy pulled him along with Jack. He let them guide him past the dying and screaming people out the door, back to the Humvee where Jody sat waiting with his hands on the wheel. The door slammed as he was forced into the back, and as the Hummer rumbled away from the screams and mayhem; Andrew wept for his Sally.
11
Now, Andrew laid on the sled, delirious. The world around him rushed by in dashes of green and brown. Though she sounded a thousand miles away, from somewhere in front of him came the voice of his captor.
“Dumb worthless hag! Tramp, they call me! Was once a good woman. They didn’t care ‘bout my past, only ‘bout what happened. Weren’t my fault. What those boys did to me? Rich boys, back when I was young, used me up; turnt me out. Now look at em. All dead! Me? I’m right here, honey child. Yes, indeedy. Right here where the sun still shines, and my bones can soak up the rays. You betcha pale torn lil ass.”
Her words fell on Andrew’s ears in fuzzy wisps, the sounds barely audible like some strange and ghoulish nightmare, where he knows he is being pulled to his death but can’t do a damn thing to stop it. Her black shadow danced over his eyes as he tried to look up and get a glimpse, but his head couldn’t stay upright, and fell back hard against the sled. So, he just stared up at the green canopy, and wept.
“Tears? Shiiiit. Tears ain’t gonna save nothin,’ boy. Cried once too ya know? Didn’t do me a bit of good. You’s just a boy, and boys hurt girls like me. Use ‘em up, spit ‘em out. Not now though. Oh no! Good Lord done gone and turned the tide; yee-haw, white boy. Yee fucking haw! Now I bring the tears, and causin the pain.”
The jerk of the sled jostled him around. He felt a powerful dose of nausea and green bile erupt from his mouth. He couldn’t turn to spit it out, and it began filling up his throat and causing a sickening garbling noise.
“Oh no you don’t, pretty lil white boy! Not that easy!” The woman came to, and walked over to Andrew. His body was turned to the side, and old hands slapped his back hard, causing the bile to spill out of his mouth and onto the ground.
“Better. Can’t let ya spoil. You fine ass white meat, son. Hell, we all’s just meat.”
His vision cleared, and he was left on his side as she pulled him deeper and deeper into the dark and wild wilderness. As the day grew darker, his eyes closed, and he kept them closed. His legs hurt under the thick straps holding him down. What was happening? He'd been doing so well for nearly a year, hardly any troubles considering the nature of the New World. Then just like that, the tables had turned.
No, this can't be happening. All a dream, just a bad dream that would end soon. He’d wake up and see his Sally Fighart at any moment. “Just a dream, Drew! Wake up you dirty scound
rel. Didn’t you hear? I made varsity this year! Aren’t you happy for me?”
“Yes, Sally of course I'm happy for you, but… why did you have to go and start dating Barry Darkwood? You always said…”
Sally had cut him off, “I always said I’d never date a preppy.
And Barry Darkwood wore his polos flipped up around the collar like some flashback to the 80s. His fancy cars (he had three of them), all paid for by his dear ole father, Judge Barry Darkwood the first, which of course made Barry Darkwood the second biggest asshole in all of Horry county.
By junior year, Sally had turned into a red firebomb of a sexy looker. Her breasts developed into full C cups, and her once long thin bird legs radicalized into lean mean running machines, and her rump had a firm piece of muscle that perked its way into every high school boy’s lingering horny field of vision.
She’d fallen for Barry fucking Darkwood, the single biggest prick in all the land. Sally took it further when Andrew pointed this out, “Yeah he does have a big prick, and I tell you now… I like it.”
“Great. He is just the all in one package.”
“I call him The Total Package.”
One year later, much to Sally’s dismay and dripping tears, Barry Darkwood forgot she existed after he disappeared in the California college scene, two thousand miles away. She'd held on to Andrew like a sad puppy. “You can’t trust men with big cocks. That’s what I am taking away from this. Never trust a man with a big cock.” She’d then slipped her hand into Andrew’s pants, and made the confirmation that he possessed the qualities of a fine, trustworthy and decent man. After that moment, despite his obsessing calls, Andrew never saw, or heard from Sally again until that fateful day at the Piggly Wiggly.
Those days died, and Andrew’s haze started to lift. The old woman rambled her autobiography, jumping from story to story without offering much consistency. She once been a real looker, a real doll. Something every man wanted. Then she was a little girl, just a play thing for her brothers and daddy. Used her up, spit her out. We all’s just meat after all. Then, them boys done found her and used her in a dark alley. Then she was in love with a real man, Donny Jumper; she called him a real winner. Then she was back at a hospital holding Donny’s hand, cancer they said. Couldn’t save Donny, he died for sure. We all’s just meat after all.
