Life on Mars

by Lori McNulty

  Go ahead and read, sis. You’ll get all worked up and nutty over life’s cruel injustices and take it out on the world. Revenge is a dish best served hot-blooded.

  I decide to slip back downstairs into the cage, grab my fine-tip black Sharpie, and air out the old man-memoir.

  Vexed: The Journal of Alex P. Jones, a Major Minor

  Survival of the male species? Perilous. Tonight it was greens and gopher bits for Badger. Mac and cheese with beefy franks for me, please, I asked Mom. No way, she said. Wieners are made from emulsified meat and that’s gross. So Mom fixed me this heap of nutted pilaf. Here I am on the doorstep of manhood and I’m stuck choking on bird balls. Nothing but smog in my troposphere, I tell you. Like all those SUV drivers tearing the ozone a new one. They don’t give a crap about me or anyone else. My head is going freaking supernova. All I need is one night. One explosive night in the suburbs. Trask and Badger will meet this Friday, become an inseparable duo for one ravaging instant that annihilates time. Are you paying attention? Eyes on the page, and away from that viral video about the tiny lemur eating a rice ball. Stick with me. We’re gonna raze this thing. Once Badger fully absorbs my version of Hog Badger fantasy fiction, her own hero’s journey is going to stray far off course. And reign terror all over the long winter’s night.

  Hearing Badger screech, I perk up. Better abandon your expectations, sis. Let your eyes fall heavy on the page. You’re going to become incensed at the latest plot turn. I’ve made sure of it.

  Posse hunters hot on his tail, Hog Badger zigzags through the woods in search of his hillside hideout. Passing a shallow, frozen pond Hog Badger thinks he hears a hottie pop up behind a fallen log fringing the water. Approaching slowly, he lets out a throaty churr. She disappears beyond the wooded ridge.

  It’s a trap!

  Fluffed up and hissing, the Nocturnals are staging a revolt. Coyote emerges, surrounded by wolverines and a sleepy Kit Fox. They corner Hog Badger, driving him against a plump blue spruce.

  “You’re reckless,” Kit Fox barks at Hog Badger. “You put us all in jeopardy with your stupid antics the other night.”

  “So I slipped a mouse tail into a manila envelope on the trail. A lark! Just wanted to rile them all up. They’re so dumb and twitchy when one of them goes down. Come on guys, I’m a lover not a fighter.”

  “What about the human kill?” rejoins Coyote. “Posse’s after blood now that you’ve gutted one of their own.”

  “My claws are dull as democrats,” Hog Badger protests, showing off his blunt tips. “It wasn’t me.”

  The Nocturnals press forward, jaws open and salivating.

  “Seriously,” Hog Badger pleads. “Could have been that greedy Woodchuck. Guy thinks everything is a joke. That squat fellow was already ravaged by the time I got there.”

  Coyote howls. Hearing the advancing posse approach, the Nocturnals scatter, leaving Hog Badger defenceless.

  Pushed to the east by the advancing posse, hemmed in by the Nocturnals on the west, Hog Badger flees far north. Panting hard, he scurries in search of a new hillside hideout, far from the rifle shots and boozy breath. He knows the Nocturnals didn’t buy his innocent act. They realize he’s a ferocious hunter, has got a nose for blood and the anal glands of a shit-kicker. There’s no returning to the life he had. There’s a mark on his back, and he can’t escape it.

  I hear a high-pitched scream upstairs, then the unmistakable sound of Badger sobbing. I slip out of my cage and sneak upstairs to my sister’s door.

  Sis makes this scary growl-click with her teeth.

  “Where is the courtship, the canoodling?” she shrieks, sifting and shredding pages. “Where’s his badger honey? All those suckling cubs!”

  Sis claws at the pages in vain. “He’ll be dumpster diving. Forced to live on cat food,” she wails. And I scramble to a hiding spot down the hall, when I hear, “Oh merciless world,” then the sound of a heavy object hitting her wall.

  Once Badger has had the chance to calm down, I find her rustling around in the kitchen. I stroll in to find sis stuffing her emotions.

  “What’s up, beast breath?” I say, casually pulling up a chair.

  “Despair,” she says, holding a bagful of houseflies. “Annihilation,” she adds, and starts popping the insects in her mouth like peanuts. Sick.

  “Yo, so sis, did I tell you? It was hot dog day in the caf today. Plenty of all-beef leftovers and chucked sunflower seeds to help you fill that void.”

  Badger moans.

  “Check it out tonight. Caf is deserted on Thursday nights.”

  Sis snaps a fly head between her incisors. Not even paying attention to me.

  So I turn up the volume. Tell her I visited Stempson’s hardware store after school. Share how he rudely ignored my attempts to explain the importance of fractal geometry in building flame assault rocket launchers, after collaring me for stealing a cheap four-inch toilet flange hook-up. Then he spotted the four-foot length of PVC pipe I had stuffed into the back of my jeans. Along with a pilfered trigger assembly.

  “So I go all Master of Disaster on him,” I tell sis, doing a jumping kung fu kick by the stove.

  Badger growls at me.

  “Stempson’s on the school board with Drudd, you know,” I inform her. “Think they’re conspiring to squeeze us out. Better gather some energy.”

  A hungry look crosses Badger’s face.

  “Wonder what that nastyass Hog Badger would do?” I say, lightly, elbow on the table, chin propped up with my fist.

  Before I even have to remind her to bite Trask at the Friday night science fair soirée, she’s shimmied up the living-room curtains to the windowsill. I race to the open window, see her plop down onto the driveway. Steam curls from the nostrils of her tipped-up nose. She’s headed to the school to fill her belly with white buns and salty luncheon meat. Go ahead and mess up that school real good, sis. Just as every story needs the right set-up, every conquering hero needs a fall guy.

  This chapter of my life is unfolding exactly as expected. The next one will set things right forever.

  Mom is staring into the open fridge when I roll into the kitchen Friday afternoon to drop the urgent school notice on the table. She sets down her coffee cup and picks up the letter with the words “School Breach Last Night” typed in bold across the top.

  Mom reads aloud, clicking her tongue about the breakin at school Thursday night. Food and garbage scattered. Vandals tore apart most of the furniture in the cafeteria.

  Almost on cue, the phone rings. I hear Mom gasp on the line for several minutes. She hangs up and marches straight to Badger’s room.

  I trail at a stealthy distance.

  Mom squats down, eyeballing Badger who is cowering under the bed. I crouch down behind Mom, out of sight.

  “Mrs. Drudd called.” Mom is rubbing her eyes. “You know, the woman who started this whole city eviction process and the head of the school board’s safety committee.” Mom waves the letter around, amid swirling dust bunnies. “They found some smudged five-toed prints around the vandalized cafeteria.”

  Badger slips further into shadow.

  “I told you to stay indoors.”

  Badger’s white head stripe is barely visible now.

  “She wants you chained up like a common dog,” Mom chokes up on the last bit.

  Badger busts out from under the bed, hops up on the mattress, and burrows under the bedsheets before Mom can grab hold of her.

  “They will drive us out,” Mom says, her hands trembling.

  Badger tunnels in deeper, purring anxiously.

  “We’re not done talking, Miss.”

  Mom checks her watch. From Mom’s side of the call, I know she’s got to attend the emergency meeting Drudd has called. The principal is up in arms. City manager’s even showing up. School destruction will cost thousands to repair, and there’s no more room in the budget. Someone will have to pay.

  “Don’t you move from this house tonight,” Mom orders Badger, who is
nothing but a lump of shame in Mom’s throat right now.

  To be a hero, I remind Mom on her way out to the emergency meeting that last month a family of raccoons snuck into the school through an open window in the boiler room. Who says it wasn’t those ring-tailed, five-toed bandits making that mess in the caf? (Reasonable doubt, baby. It’s a beautiful thing.)

  Okay, so maybe I do feel a little sorry for sis. After Mom heads out to face Drudd, I stick around long enough to watch sis pull the faux romance novel off the night table, and dig into the story, her beady eyes wet with worry and regret.

  Mating season has come and gone. No rest or love for the Hog Badger. Bony, half-starved, he rubs up against the trees, leaving his scent in an effort to lead astray the bloodthirsty posse. After a long fitful journey, Hog Badger stumbles upon an abandoned den and digs a hole at the entrance, large enough to trap passing prey. Settling inside for some uninterrupted sleep, he awakens to a grunting sound outside. A large, stumbling, six-foot furry mammal, reeking of smoked sausage, has tumbled into his trap. Famished, Hog Badger flies at the exposed throat and belly. As he sinks his canines again and again into the blood-matted fur, the desire to keep feasting consumes him. He trots further out and up into the hills. Under a full moon, the night clear and cold, he begins scouting for more prey, when multiple shotgun rounds blast out across the hills. Hog Badger stiffens and collapses, oozing blood from his long pink snout.

  When I hear Badger’s bedroom door slam shut, I crawl upstairs in semi-darkness and crack the door. Badger is looking out her window.

  I know where sis will be headed. Despite my mother’s warning, my lonely, love-starved carnivore will skitter into the cold to tame a hunger she can’t name. She’ll smell the buffet lineup at the school for the science fair soirée and be on Trask like flies on an outhouse turd. I better get moving right now.

  From the coatroom of the science fair soirée, I watch Trask hold court before a long row of lame-ass project display boards. When I brush his shoulder in the moving crowd, I manage to slightly nick him with my penknife. He looks up, angry and confused, so I speed out the door with my coat over my arm, get hooked scrambling over the chain-link fence. I have to strip off my red T-shirt to get free. I drop down on the icy sidewalk, throw my coat on, and beat a path home. Once I slip inside my cage, I wipe off my greasy hands with a moist toilette.

  Soon, Trask will be the last man to leave the science fair soirée. Badger will watch Trask head out to his car, get a faint whiff of blood, and sink her teeth into his juicy paunch. This is going to be awesome!

  I sleep like a baby Friday night, so don’t even hear Badger slip back in her room. My head is clear, my mind calm, when I get up early Saturday morning.

  I fill up on a protein shake while Mom is doing the Saturday morning grocery run. A car door slams outside. Shorty, in a too-tight blue uniform, and his partner Groucho emerge from their police car and ring the bell.

  A serious incident at the school last night, the cop with the fuzzy moustache tells me at the door. “Alex, right? Is your mother at home?” Groucho asks, looking over my shoulder.

  I shake my head. “How do you know my name?”

  “Listen, son,” he says, ignoring me, “the school will be closed on the weekend, no sports or extracurriculars, and probably Monday and Tuesday as well.”

  “Why?” I make a witless gesture, feigning ignorance.

  “We found snow-dusted paw prints around a seriously wounded victim outside the school last night. Other prints lead up into the wooded trails. They’re the same five-toed prints we found the night of the school vandalism,” he says, and strains to look past me into the house.

  “My sister’s a roaming badger,” I reply calmly, “what do you expect?”

  A high-pitched chur emits from the kitchen. Hearing claw clicks across the floor, the officers barge past to find Badger eating blackberries at the kitchen table. When her white-striped face turns toward them, I see a bright berry hang from her lower lip. She slurps it up, scrambles down the chair, and breaks for the laundry room. The cops follow fast on her tail. I trail the cops, watching Badger dive under a stack of cotton sheets. Her white dorsal stripe disappears in a thick cotton blur, and her two round eyes poke back up. The tall one, I can tell, is fighting the urge to hold her and tickle her soft grey underbelly.

  I stand at the doorway, ignored.

  “Really hope you catch the guy who hurt our beloved science teacher,” I mutter while the cops are groping around for Badger, scooping up towels and underwear. “Bad luck for Trask,” I continue out of earshot. “Did you know he threatened to assault a student? So what if that student brought little bit of solid fuel to class? Stuff was sealed in a baby-food jar. What’s the big deal if this wunderkind was building a super cool DIY shoulder-fired rocket launcher to rid the world of vermin and miscreants like Ronnie and Trask? That’s what men of action do. Truth is, Trask was weak willed and bummed out. Failed marriage. The recession. Global water crisis. All those IT jobs going overseas. Yes sirs, guess he finally ran out of hope. But honestly, who tears out his own throat with the tweezer apparatus? Anyway, I just hope Mr. Trask is in a better place right now. I mean, places.”

  Cops are too absorbed watching my sis burrow under a pile of fluffy pillowcases to listen. Badger pokes her head up from the basket. A silk pillowcase flap is draped across one dewy brown eye. The tall cop cocks his head, giving his moustache a tweak. Must be a dad.

  Badger bolts down the hall and out the front door I’ve conveniently left ajar. Giving chase, the cops end up slip-sliding on the icy driveway, and both collapse into a heap behind their squad car.

  “Hope she’s okay in this freeze-up,” the tall, mustachioed cop says, finding his feet. He turns toward me and wipes his hands.

  “We just needed to ask her some questions. Mrs. Drudd from next door says she covers a lot of territory. There’s a violent predator in our midst. And nobody knows the backwoods better.”

  “Sure, sure,” I say, thinking Badger will be fine, as they drive off. These days, the winter is her best friend.

  Vexed: The Memoir of Alex P. Jones, a Major Minor

  Are the best years of my life ahead of me? It’s a question I ponder when the Snickers crash hits me like a falling meteor. Dad believed things would always turn out for the best, but what good did that crap do us? He gave us a reason for hope. We got hosed. No one gets out alive. That’s right, O Reader, stop believing in life’s fiction and confront the flaming turd of truth. And don’t just sit there dragging passively behind the plot. This is my memoir, my story, not some crappy drugstore novel where the clumsy action rises midway then dumps you on your ass. And stop foisting all your dreamy romantic resolutions on me, too. Your need for redemption is your own sad story. Who said that the past is a tapeworm, constantly growing, which I carry curled up inside me? Super gross. Forget it. You’re pinned to my own progress now. So get in lockstep, O Reader. Are you a prisoner? Is this a cage? Are we imprisoned together? Hardly. We’re all stuck in our own steel-reinforced cages after all.

  Badger is busy heaving her unpleasant musk through the house when the cops return Saturday afternoon to deliver the news that the victim, Mr. Trask, didn’t make it. As Mom and I stand shoulder to shoulder in the doorway, taking in the shocking news, she covers her mouth, while I blink away tears of joy.

  From out of nowhere, Drudd lunges for me between the cops. “Badger’s responsible, I can feel it in my bones.”

  “Boy’s just lost his science teacher,” Groucho orders, his arm shooting out to stop Drudd in her tracks.

  I do my best tear-duct well-up. Drudd sputters on with her wild accusations while my mind drifts, contemplating spicy fries and supermodels, the antidote to everything at my age.

  “We’ll handle this, ma’am,” says the tall officer who escorts her back across the street.

  Yep, Trask should have known. If you’re the last guy out after the science fair soirée on Friday, you’d better check your pocke
ts for a coil of blood sausage and your forearm for a slight nick. And if in your haste to get home, you stumble into a freshly dug, hip-deep hole near your shitty minivan, you’ll probably end up with a nasty groin injury. And if a limping man in the pitch-dark with a pocket full of blood sausage is mistaken by a tormented, lovesick, far-sighted member of the family Mustelidae (née Badger Jones) for prey, he might find himself face to face with his own mortality.

  And I wonder if, in his final, ravaged seconds, Trask stopped to examine his pitiful life. Before his body drained of excess cellulite, assorted platelets, plasma, and hemoglobin, did he ponder his role in escalating this conflict? Bogus A grades for rugby jocks. All those rumoured hands-on experiments with Suzie. In his final hour, did he crave redemption? Absolution? Contemplate life beyond the grave? In his spiritually barren stupor, did he even wonder what comes next?

  One down. More enemies to go. Sunday morning I am eating my favourite toasted honey-and-bacon sandwiches in the cage when, through the vent, I hear Badger moaning softly in her room.

  Mom is still in bed, exhausted after this latest turn of events. Drudd is keeping the town on edge. Badger is omnivore suspect number one in her view, but there’s no substantial proof. Sis has been roaming for weeks around these parts without any serious human incidents, plus the prints were already compromised by snowfall. We’ve been back and forth to the station to tell our story. Without hard evidence linking sis to the killing, no arrest can be warranted. Even so, we’ve heard a rumour that Drudd is threatening to form a vigilante team to haul Badger in.

  So when I hear the doorbell ring after eating my sandwich, I figure it’s just crazy Drudd about to go off on me again.