The look was an unmistakable sign of compassion. And although that compassion might be buried deep within him, it still came out. That was more than Kofi could find in any of the other supposed humans in the room. And never having experienced such compassion from anyone before, befriending Van became the reason for Kofi to say “Yes Brother John. I accept your commitment.”
With those words brother John let out a stream of urine that hit Kofi in the face. Kofi closed his eyes and imagined himself somewhere else.
The crowd screamed with cheers as President Brian spoke again. “Brother Chris, give your commitment to pledge Kofi.”
“To you, pledge Kofi, I offer you my commitment. Do you accept it?” brother Chris said walking toward Kofi who sat at a picnic table covered in piss.
“Yes Brother Chris, I accept your commitment.”
One at a time each of the brothers approached Kofi and asked him if he wanted them to pee on him so that he could be a part of their group. Each time Kofi said yes. And as Kofi’s clothes became more soaked with pee, it became clear that the brothers had prepared for this moment. It was clear that each of them had spent the night before eating asparagus because the accumulated smell of urine and vomit in this basement was ungodly.
It would have been easy to miss, but Kofi noticed when all of his pledge brothers backed as far away from him as they could. But even with that distance Kofi watched as one by one each of the pledges threw up into their pale again.
When each of the brothers had had their turn and Kofi sat unfazed and dripping with pee, Brian declared that the pledges were now standing in front of a new brother. Brian then ordered the pledges to get a towel and relieve their new brother of his clothes. And as Kieran ran upstairs, Van was the first one to help Kofi to his feet. The pools of pee that had formed in Kofi’s lap poured out onto Van. Kofi became embarrassed.
“Sorry,” Kofi said in a whisper to Van.
“Don’t,” Van replied with heart break
Van unbuttoned the first few buttons of his shirt before the other pledges joined in.
“When you’re done with him, clean up this fucking place until it smells human in here,” Brian said as the brothers headed upstairs. “And when you’re all cleaned up, and I mean all of that fucking asparagus smell is off of you,” the brother said with a drunken laugh, “you can join your brothers in the lounge.”
As the brothers left the room, Van couldn’t hold his question back anymore. He leaned in and whispered into Kofi’s ear which had little puddles of piss in it. “Was it worth it?” Van asked.
“Yeah,” was Kofi’s only response.
“Why?” Van replied looking into Kofi’s hardened eyes.
Kofi didn’t speak. He instead chose to look into the eyes of someone he was sure was going to become his first college friend. Kieran interrupted the two to wrap Kofi’s hairy, naked, thick body with a towel. And after Kofi stopped dripping pee, Kieran was the one to lead Kofi to the nearest shower. Van hadn’t gotten his answer, but Van decided to befriend Kofi so that one day he would find out.
After another month of walking around campus dressed as homeless people and prostitutes, of endless calisthenics and of hours of memorization, all three of them were brothers. Van befriended Kofi first and it was Kofi who one day said to him “I feel like getting my cock sucked. You ever hired one of those girls from the back of the weekly?”
“What, you mean a hooker?” Van asked surprised but curious.
“Hey be respectful, they’re escorts. And I’m not talking about fuckin’ them. I just mean them suckin’ on our cocks for a little while,” Kofi said with a smile.
“That’s fucked up,” Van declared, almost dismissing the whole idea.
“Come on. I’ll even pay as long as you do it with me.”
“I don’t know man. That’s fucked up,” Van said, not denying his interest.
“Come on, I’ll call. Should we bring her over here?”
“To the frat house? Fuck no,” Van retorted.
“I can’t have her come to my dorm, my roommate would flip.”
“There’s a bathroom on the third floor of Kerckhoff Hall. It locks.”
“So should I tell her go there?” Kofi said with a smile.
“I don’t know, man.”
“I’m gonna call.” Kofi picked up the phone and dialed. Looking back at Van for any sign of resistance Kofi listened to the phone ring. “Yeah, I’m looking for someone that will offer me certain services.” Kofi paused while listening. “Does that time include a certain service?” Kofi paused again. “Kerckhoff Hall on the UCLA campus. Uh huh. Second door on the right on the third floor.” Kofi then looked away. “Four o’clock. Can you do that?” Kofi looked back at Van. “Ok, I’m looking forward to it.” Kofi hung up the phone.
“No you fuckin’ didn’t,” Van said, shocked.
“Yeah I fuckin’ did,” Kofi said with huge grin.
“Four o’clock is in the middle of the fuckin’ day,” Van said, trying to comprehend everything that was going on.
“We’ll call it a nooner,” Kofi said still grinning.
“A nooner is sex during lunch, you fuck!”
“You’re complaining about what time of day it is that you’re going to get your cock sucked? Are you joking with me?” Kofi laughed.
“The sun is still out. And you didn’t tell her anything about me being there.”
“I’ll give her another hundred dollars to do both of us. What the fuck does she care? It’s more money,” Kofi said, turning more serious.
“I guess you’re right.”
“Yeah I’m right. Now I want to hear some fuckin’ thank yous for what will be the best four o’clock of your life.”
Van thought about it a little longer. “Yeah,” he said with a smile.
“No, fuck yeah,” Kofi corrected, throwing his arm around his friend.
As 4 o’clock approached, Van and Kofi made their way upstairs from the coffee shop and locked themselves into the third floor bathroom. Locked in the bathroom, Kofi wasn’t as confident as he was a few hours earlier.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Kofi admitted, trying to hide the sweat marks under his arms.
“This was your idea,” Van said with angry disappointment.
“Yeah, but...”
“No, fuck yeah,” Van said mocking his friend.
“You go first.” Kofi looked over at the two stalls. “Ok, you go first and then afterwards I’ll come out and join you.”
Van looked at the shaken Kofi.
“No, this is good. I’m gonna be in here. Afterwards I’ll come out and then she’ll hop on my bald man.”
“Yeah, ok. What do I care?” Van said blinded by the piece of wood in his pants.
“Ok, it’s four. Unlock the door. Her name is Cat. She sounded very nice on the phone so be cool.”
“You be cool,” Van said as he unlocked the bathroom door.
Kofi locked himself into the stall furthest away from the window and Van went back to the other stall and waited. After about 10 minutes of silence Van spoke.
“Are you sure she’s coming?”
“She said she’d be here, alright.” Kofi said uncomfortably.
“I knew she wasn’t gonna come to a fuckin’ bathroom.”
“This was your fuckin’ idea, alright,” Kofi replied with anger before catching himself. “Just give it another minute. She’s gonna be here.”
Van got up and stared out the open window in front of his stall. It was an old window that slid upwards. The missing screen left a large enough gap that 2 people could sit side by side on the sill. And as Van made himself comfortable on the wall watching the people three stories below, he heard a hand push on the door.
Van felt a jolt of adrenaline shoot through his body. The truth was that he didn’t have much experience with sex. In fact, he had been pretty shy about the whole topic. But there was something about the feeling of power that he got in this situation that aroused him.
As Van backed himself into the stall, he heard someone enter the bathroom. Exhilarated by it all he slowly leaned his head past the door to see who had entered. When he looked out he didn’t find the petite nimble girl that the name Cat implied. He found the largest, bald, white guy that he had ever seen.
Van quickly tucked himself back into the stall, but it wasn’t quick enough because the giant had seen him.
“You looking for Cat?” the man said in what had to have been a 21-year-old’s voice.
Van again stuck his head out past the door. “Who are you?”
“I’m her driver. I came to collect the money.”
“Where’s Cat?” Van asked, pulled completely out of the adventure that he imagined for himself.
“She’s downstairs. You pay me and I’ll send her up,” the man said in an intimidating voice.
Van thought for a second. This wasn’t what he signed up for. He didn’t like the feeling he got from this man. And the way Van saw it, he was under no obligation to continue on.
“No that’s Ok. I’m not interested,” Van replied.
“You could see her or not. I don’t care. But you will pay her for coming all the way out here.”
“Fuck that! No, you can fuckin’ leave now,” Van said with more balls than actually lay in his pants.
“No I fuckin’ can’t,” the man said as he moved himself in front of Van’s stall door. “Now, you’re either gonna give me the fuckin’ money, or I’m gonna take it out of the pocket of your fuckin’ corpse. Either way I’m getting it.”
Van was surprised how large the man was when he stood in front of the stall. The giant’s head barely made it under the metal bar that held the doors up and his body was much too wide to fit into the door head on. So when the monster reached his meat claws into the box, it was no surprise that it caught onto Van’s shirt and pulled him out.
Van was a strong guy. But when he found himself giving no resistance to the man’s pull, his heart raced.
“Are you gonna give me the money?” the giant said pulling Van to him like a doll.
“Let me the fuck go,” Van yelled struggling.
Just then Van’s heart stopped when he felt what seemed like a baseball mitt hitting his face. Van was stunned by the echoing sound of it.
“I didn’t say speak. I said give me the money. You wanna speak some more?” the man said looking down at Van with true anger in his eyes.
“I,” Van began before he felt another slap across the face that this time made his ears ring.
Van looked up again into his capturer’s face and a thought of horror washed through his mind. ‘I am helpless,’ Van thought. ‘I am a child in this man’s hands and there’s nothing that I can do about it.’
Van felt a slap again.
“Are you gonna give it to me?” the man said before hitting him again, harder. “Are you gonna give it to me?”
Van was now disorientated. He had never been hit so hard before. The blows felt like they were rattling his brain. And after each of the succession of blows, Van lost more and more of who he was and what he was doing there.
The giant, on the other hand, didn’t register any of Van’s problems. He was getting lost in the feeling of what he was doing. With each strike he was losing a part of himself too. But in the monster’s case, he liked it. In fact he loved it. He began to hit Van like a rag doll and after Van’s knees started to buckle he cradled the back of Van’s head and began to pull him out of the stall. Van felt as light as a blow-up doll in the monster’s hands. And the monster was just about to royally fuck up his blow-up doll.
It was when the giant readjusted himself to pick Van up that he felt something unexpected on his left side. If it had happened a moment sooner or afterwards the monster would have just shaken it off. But because it happened mid step, he fell to his side.
And because the blow came from such a low angle the oaf couldn’t move his foot fast enough to regain his balance. And because he was standing beside the open window instead of a wall, when the menace stuck his arm out to catch himself he instead grabbed air.
And because the bump wasn’t just a bounce but the force of someone pushing, the bald man let go of Van and missed the sill as it moved past his body. And because once a 350 pound body starts moving it is hard to stop, the man continued through the open bathroom window, traveled past two stories of windows and hit the ground below with a crack.
It was at that point that the dazed Van looked up from the stall to see the intense look on his friend’s face. It was a look of anger. It was a look that said ‘I could kill someone.’ It was a look that Van had hoped that he would never see in his friend again. As it happened then, he would only see it once more.
“What’s up Kofi?” Van said hoping to break the disturbing silence. “Ahhh, did you want to talk about something?” Van again looked into Kofi’s eyes. His friend was inside, he just wasn’t answering the door. “You know I was worrying a little bit when I couldn’t get a hold of you. Kieran too. I don’t get it. What was up with that? That was one wild fuckin’ party. I don’t even remember half of it. I remember that Kieran hooked us up with those chicks. I remember mine was smokin’ and I fucked her brains out. But the next morning when I got up, you all were gone. Seriously, what was up with that?”
Kofi still didn’t answer, but with Van’s words Kofi’s body loosened.
“Is that my sword, man?” Van asked looking at the shiny sword with the leather grip that he and Kofi had bought on a trip that the three friends had taken to Japan.
“You really don’t remember anything about that party?” Kofi said at last.
“A fuckin’ blank.” Van said glad to hear Kofi’s voice. “Is that my sword, man?”
“Does it look like your fuckin’ sword?” Kofi said returning to a comfort level that reflected a visitor in a home.
“Why yes, yes the fuck it does.” Feeling comfortable, Van pushed past Kofi into the hallway and into the living room. Van looked around and saw his sword still sitting above his samurai shrine.
“Ok, so that’s not mine. But first, where the fuck have you been for the last 8 months? And why the fuck are you in my apartment at 3 o’clock in the morning?”
“Why are you walking around in your underwear?” Kofi asked as a counter.
“Because it’s my apartment and it’s fuckin’ 3 o’clock in the morning. If I knew you were coming, I would have baked you a cake or something. But break into my place in the middle of the night and you get the outline of my ball sack. That’s just how I run things.” Van replied with contempt.
“Listen, I need your help,” Kofi said turning back into Van’s best friend.
“What do you need?” Van replied without hesitation.
“I need you to help me kill some zombies,” Kofi said looking into Van’s eyes.
“Are you one of those fuckin’ zombie hunter vigilantes now?”
“I am now.”
“Ahhh, no.”
“Hey, I’m gonna kill somebody tonight. And you fuckin’ owe me. Don’t make me say it again, but you fuckin’ owe me,” Kofi said with a dark look in his eyes.
Van knew that Kofi was right. He did owe Kofi. Kofi had pushed that man out of the third story window for him. And in all of the years that had passed between then and now, Kofi had never brought it up.
Even right after it happened Kofi didn’t say a word. He simply helped Van up and led him into the computer lab down the hall from the bathroom. No one was in the lab when they entered so Kofi pointed Van over to a computer and said “Write a paper.”
Van walked over and sat down, but he couldn’t write. Instead he stared at the screen thinking about what had just happened and how Kofi had just saved him by pushing someone out of a third story window.
“Write something,” Kofi said again before diving into a flurry of key strokes.
Van tried to write something but it was hard for him to get very far because everything he wrote he had to read three t
imes to make sure he hadn’t written ‘Oh my fuckin’ god, Kofi just pushed someone out of the window.’ In the end Van had only written that phrase once.
After 45 minutes of silence, Kofi said, “I need to get a disc. This shit is good.” Neither man mentioned that they were expecting to hear screams or to be interrupted by the police. Neither man mentioned how strange it was that no one had walked by the computer lab door after a man was seen falling, hopefully jumping out of the bathroom window. But since both were pretending that it never happened, both carried on.
As Kofi and Van hit the ground floor they exited the building on the far side from the bathroom. They immediately turned from where the man had landed and walked away. They were both surprised that nothing was roped off. There were no cops on the scene and no ambulances. At the very least there should have been medics, but there were none.
Neither Van nor Kofi looked back. Both walked forward and neither of them ever said a word about it to each other. That is, no one said a word until Kofi brought it up this night.
“Don’t make me fuckin’ say it,” Kofi said, referring to the debt.
“No. What do you need me to do?” Van said turning away from the sword on the wall.
“I need you to put on some pants is number one.”
Samurai Zombie Hunter Page 3
