by Sean Platt
They reached an open spot wide enough for a campfire, and Boricio threw the diddler down to the dirt, kicking him as he landed. He made a fire like a good Scout, then after the flames got nice and going, Boricio unzipped his backpack and pulled out a large bag of marshmallows and a coat hanger. With great ceremony Boricio untwisted the coat hanger at the top until it was a long and skinny metal stick. He stabbed the marshmallow then jabbed it into the fire.
Everything about Boricio turned suddenly pleasant. “Did you know I was a Webelo in the Cub Scouts?” Boricio asked. Not that he would have, but Boricio didn’t even give the diddler a chance to answer before he said, “Sure as shit was. For six months I was with a family who cared about crap. Some of that crap was Boy Scouts. The older boys in the family were all Scouts, and they asked if I wanted to be a Cub. I wanted to fit in so I said I already was, had joined with the family before them. They asked what I was and I said Bear, because this cunt hair of a crybaby named Nolan Bryant at my school before that family was a Bear already and I remembered him saying he was working to make Webelo. So they took my word for it, or pretended to not know I was lying, and I started earning my badges. You following?”
Boricio looked over the flames at the diddler as he turned his marshmallow in the fire.
The diddler nodded, and Boricio continued.
“Our pack had a bake sale. Everything was supposed to be baked and frosted by us Scouts. My fosters were rule followers, though, so I was baking cake and smearing shit all over the kitchen. I burned my hand, under-cooked the cake, spilled frosting, and made lumps of cooked dough that looked more like collapsed lungs than anything else. Other kids showed up with shit that looked baked in a bakery. I was proud of my effort, and thought I’d done what I was supposed to do, but I brought crap to sell, sold nothing, and got a hell of a beating when I got home, after embarrassing the family name, even though I was never allowed to share it.”
Boricio pulled his coat hanger from the flames. The diddler stared at him from the other side of the fire with giant, terrified eyes.
“Scouts were bullshit. The only thing I ever liked was the camping, the coming out to the woods. Hot dogs and marshmallows. You like marshmallows, kiddy diddler?”
The diddler was silent.
Boricio laughed, “How ridiculous of me — I can’t believe I left you all gagged up like that!” He leaned down into the diddler’s face. “Now, if I take this gag out of your mouth, can I count on you to not scream?”
The diddler nodded, eager to please.
“Because I’d really like to share my marshmallows with you, but I have to be sure you won’t get all girly and start yodeling. If you do I’m going to have to stab you in the leg. I know it won’t keep you from screaming, or stop what you already started, I’m sure, but it will teach you a lesson, and I suppose that’s more important than silence. Can I trust you not to scream?”
The diddler nodded.
Boricio yanked the gag from the diddler’s mouth then feigned as if he was about to give him the marshmallow from his end of the wire, but drew it back when it was a few inches from his face. “Sorry, kiddy diddler,” Boricio said. “The marshmallow’s cold. Let me heat it up for you.”
He stuck the marshmallow into the fire, let the flames lick it, then pulled it out, went back to the diddler, pinched his nose to collapse his air with his right pointer and thumb, then when the diddler choked for breath Boricio shoved the still glowing sugar lump into his open maw. He let go of the diddler’s nose. The man screamed as the marshmallow burned inside his mouth.
“Delicious, right?” Boricio slapped his knee as the diddler spit out the marshmallow and turned his throat raw from screaming. “Sorry I don’t have any chocolate or graham crackers. Really there’s no excuse. It’s not like this was last minute. I thought about how I was going to make you pay for all the diddling the whole way up here. It was a long drive, all the way from New York. Usually, I like to purge closer to home. Gas is a bitch, and my feet get itchy hovering over the pedals all day, but you’re special, totally worth it. Wouldn’t trade our time together for nothing.”
Boricio leaned into the diddler, narrowing his eyes in concern as the diddler cried in pain. “You OK there? Hope you’re not wanting any water. I don’t have any of that either. Maybe it will dim the pain if you think of all the torment you’ve caused to others.” Boricio scrunched his nose. “Think that might work?”
The diddler whined.
“You know how it is when you burn yourself bad in the mouth with a marshmallow. Well, that shit will kill you dead. Just be grateful, I know that burns like a poker on the pecker right now, but it’s nothing like a liquid burn. Water, oil, steam — any of that would’ve been worse. But I figured they’d probably be so bad that they’d keep you from talking, and if they kept your tongue from working then they weren’t no good to me. Then again, if you’re not going to be talking anyway, it probably doesn’t matter. Maybe I should just go ahead and pinch your nose, then pour some boiling water down your throat. What do you think?”
The diddler furiously shook his head, making no sound.
“You don’t have to worry about healing, like you would after most burns. Really, kiddy diddler, we’re down to minutes. So, you just want to focus on the here and now and how much everything will hurt until it’s all over. Acidic shit like juices and vinegar, well, they’ll irritate the burn and cause you more pain. You had orange juice in your fridge — I know, I know, so stupid to remember that after forgetting the chocolate and graham crackers, shows you where my priorities are. Boiled water, juice, vinegar — I have all of it. Your answers will decide which I start with. Oh, and I also have yogurt. That will soothe the burn for sure, plus I thought you might think that was funny.” Boricio laughed.
Diddler didn’t. Instead he was crying.
“I c-c-c-can’t help it,” the diddler managed to stutter.
“Bullshit,” Boricio barked, thrusting his hand into the bag of marshmallows. He pulled one out and threw it at the diddler. “Everyone can control it. If I can control mine you can control yours.” Boricio reached into his bag, pulled out another marshmallow and threw it at the diddler’s face. It bounced off of his nose and landed by the fire.
The diddler looked up at Boricio as if there was something he wanted to say or ask. But the diddler said nothing, too busy crying like a little pussy.
“It’s all about focusing your drive,” Boricio said as he slid a fresh marshmallow onto the end of his hanger and held it in the fire. “Took me a while to figure out what was driving me. Once I did, I made sure I was driving it.”
Boricio withdrew his hanger, pulled the lightly toasted marshmallow from the top, and pulled a box of graham crackers and chocolate from his bag. Making his s’mores Boricio said, “Well, look at that! Looks like I wasn’t as absentminded as I thought.”
Boricio turned his eyes from the diddler back to his ingredients. “We’re a lot alike, actually. Difference between you and me is I don’t sport sequoias while watching Big Bird skipping down Sesame Street. When someone gets tangled in the worst side of Boricio, that’s that. Your victims shake through nightmares forever.”
“I’m sorry,” the diddler mumbled, though neither word was clear now that he was barely pushing mangled syllables past his swollen tongue. Boricio let him jabber, then took a minute to decipher. In a warble the diddler had said, “I don’t know what you think you know, but I only like older girls, yeah it’s illegal, but they’re always old enough to know better. I never hurt anyone, not like you’re thinking.
Boricio felt suddenly enraged by the guy’s dishonesty.
The fucker’s stuffing his mouth with bullshit and spitting it in my face.
“Don’t FUCKING lie to me!” Boricio roared, leaping up from the dirt, grabbing a plastic jug of orange juice beside the fire, and charging the diddler. He kicked him hard and knocked him to his side where he lay trembling. Boricio hovered above him, squeezed the diddler’s nose to open his m
outh, twisted the cap with his opposite thumb, and stood above him, ready to pour.
“OK, OK!” the diddler whined. “I did it. Everything you said, everything you think.”
“No shit,” Boricio said. He grabbed the diddler’s nose, squeezed, and poured the orange juice into his mouth. He threw the jug on the ground and let the remaining juice spill out. “I could have gone with vinegar or another marshmallow. Instead, I think I’ll end you here. I’m done with you.”
Boricio went to the back of the SUV, opened the trunk, and pulled out the chainsaw from diddler’s garage. Diddler’s eyes nearly popped from their sockets.
“Sorry,” Boricio said, smiling. “I’m gonna have to replace your gag. It’s not that I don’t trust you not to scream, I’m confident you’d do your best, but I know from experience, you won’t be able to help yourself and we’re not that deep in the woods.”
Before starting the chainsaw, Boricio kneeled next to the diddler and explained the rules of a game he had no chance of winning. Boricio would ask a series of questions. After each one he’d evaluate the diddler’s answer. If Boricio liked his answer he would refrain from cutting a limb. But his game had a couple of problems. First, Boricio wasn’t consistent as to what he did and didn’t like. The second problem made the first not matter: Two questions and the diddler was in shock. He couldn’t answer a thing.
Boricio tried to get a third response from the diddler, but after his right arm was laying in a pile by his legs, the diddler was screaming loud enough (even through the gag) to compete with a banshee, and was already starting to sputter and black out, blood turning the dirt black around the fire. So Boricio quickly finished the job, shearing his left arm then ending with the diddler’s head.
Once Boricio was done cutting the diddler into little diddler bits, he dragged his torso close to the fire, arranged his limbs, and set the diddler’s head neatly between his legs. Then, before leaving, Boricio kneeled down and doodled on his body:
Pervert, Pedo, and Short Eyes.
**
A week later …
Boricio sat on the couch, flipping through channels searching for something funny — not too fucking likely — when his cell started banging on the coffee table.
He dropped the remote on the cushion beside him, leaned over to the table, picked up the phone, and looked at the screen. It was Mary.
“The police paid me a visit,” she said, then paused, as if inviting Boricio to spill his guts.
“And?” Boricio said. “Did they ask you to the ball? Or for donations? Did they ask you if you thought the new Hawaii Five-O sucked as much as the last one?”
“They were asking about Hank Carol. Ring a bell?”
“Nah, should it?”
Mary was quiet. “You weren’t in Colorado this weekend, were you?”
“Nope,” Boricio said. “What the hell you getting at? I’m sure you have a point somewhere, and aren’t just calling with random trivia.”
“The sex offender who went up to Paola at the bus stop was found dead, Boricio. Police came to the house and questioned me and Paola.”
“Oh, wow, so you did do it,” Boricio laughed, “Good for you, Mary Poppins — I knew you had it in you! Don’t mess with Mama Bear. So what, now you need a lawyer? Someone to help you get out of town?”
“No, I didn’t do anything!” Mary said. “I was thinking maybe you knew something?”
“I had nothing to do with nothing,” Boricio said.
“You swear?” Mary asked.
“Scout’s honor.”
THE END
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Sean Platt is co-founder of the Collective Inkwell and Realm & Sands imprints, children’s author under the pen name “Guy Incognito,” speaker, and author, with breakout indie hits such as Yesterday’s Gone, WhiteSpace, The Beam, and Unicorn Western, as well as traditionally published titles such as Z 2134 and Monstrous, published by 47North.
Sean is one-third of The Self Publishing and Better Off Undead Podcasts with co-hosts Johnny B. Truant and David Wright. He currently lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, daughter, and son.
Follow Sean on Twitter: http://twitter.com/seanplatt
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David W. Wright is the co-author of the Yesterday’s Gone, WhiteSpace, ForNevermore, Available Darkness, Z 2134, and Monstrous series as well as the Dark Crossings collections of short stories and the standalone novel, Crash. He’s also a cartoonist.
He co-hosts The Self Publishing Podcast and Better Off Undead podcasts with author Johnny B. Truant and Sean Platt. Both podcasts are chock full of foul language, can go wildly off-topic, and should not be listened to by anyone.
David lives on the east coast with his wife, his 7-year old son, and the world’s most pooping-est cat.
He writes about Collective Inkwell stuff at:
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He blogs about himself, creativity, pop culture, and other stuff at:
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