..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Thursday, July 29, 2004

"It would be worth him doing it, just to catch him doing it..."
- Pulp Fiction


"I knew a bunch of girls, who take it on the floor...
now the game is nearly over and the hounds are at the door."
- Fox On The Run



FICTION:



Squirt Guns & Firing Squads



"Did I cut you?"

No matter how hard he tried, Steven couldn't say those four words the way she wanted. He was outside, away from the shipwreck and the sharks, on top of a hill in front of the car, hunched over in the glow of the headlights, looking down at the blood drying on his stomach.

"Did I cut you?"

He tried saying it again, accent on a different word, and it still wasn't working. He'd told her that he couldn't say it like she wanted since he wasn’t sure what she wanted. Seems she wanted a story to go with those words. And even with his eyes closed, he couldn't think of a story any more interesting than what had just happened.

"Did I cut you?"

Nothing.

When Steven first said those words, he was worried that he cut her. Ashley didn't like that. She said that those words always have a more sinister tone. She said that, when someone said those four words, they weren’t really worried about you at all. She said that it was just like when someone says those famous three words. No, not "I love you," she explained. She said that the three words "are you jealous?" would always carry more of a sting. She said that more people remembered where they were when someone said "are you jealous" than "I love you" because of that sting. She said there’s no denying they want you to be jealous when they say that.
"And when they say ‘did I cut you?’ You know what else they want? They're secretly hoping that they drew blood."

Drew blood. . .

Ashely said that Steven was getting it all wrong tonight. That he would never say those words the right way. All ten of them.

Then she smiled like she was flashing back and whispered something like:

"Remind me to tell you about when I was little and I made blood bubbles. . ."

She was small, too small to be thinking the way she was thinking, at least that’s what everyone kept telling her. She was holding a plastic bottle of bubbles and blowing as fast as she could, her goal was to cover the bathroom floor completely before they started to pop. It was the smallest room in the house and still she could never get more than a third of the floor covered before the first batch would begin to disappear, tickling her bare legs with tiny splashes, filling her nose with the smell of clean dishes. Then she tripped over the garbage can and wrinkled her nose as she pushed everything back inside. She stopped and slowly held up something strange by the tips of her fingers. She thought it looked like a firecracker after a 4th of July accident, bent and heavy, soaked in blood. She got an idea to make her bubbles stronger and last longer. She took out the magic wand and dipped the firecracker into her bottle by it’s tail. After a few seconds she’d filled the room with pretty pink bubbles. They were stronger when they were pink and they lasted three times as long. She wondered if she could make bubbles that would last forever. She would need more blood, and a bigger room to try it. She moved her experiment to the kitchen floor and leaned over the bottle with the prongs of a fork pressed deep into the heel of her hand. Hours later, she still couldn’t bring herself to push the fork hard enough to draw blood and she went outside to play instead.

Steven arched his hips up into the headlights again. He was disappointed with the color of the blood. It was black. It looked like he'd slipped in some tar, like maybe he’d gotten out to check his tire pressure and stumbled, his foot stuck in a piece of the road that the sun had heated back up to bubbling.

He wiped the dark blood off the heels of his hands without thinking, then looked down to see it streaked and tangled in the hairs on his stomach. He looked closer.

It was still the wrong color. He thought that it looked liked he’d picked up a rubber stain from changing a flat, or maybe from leaning in too far to rest on a bike tire he was pumping up. Or maybe it was a bug, one that was too big to be smashed without a shoe. Whatever it was, it was too black to scare him. The wrong color for a ghost story. It looked like anything except what it was.

He walked around and leaned into the car. He wanted to see what was on the radio, maybe make himself a memory. Only he’s forgotten something. He backed up and stood there and actually reached around his naked torso for the car keys. He laughed out loud, asking himself if he really thought the keys were in his mouth or up his ass. Then he almost checked the watch he didn't have on to see how long it would be before James would be walking back. He yanked a knob and now the highbeams were on. He looked down. Now things were red.

Steven jumped back out of the light and started laughing loud as a movie villain.

He stopped suddenly as something crashed through the weeds behind him. He thought the brights and laughter must have startled an animal.

He turned back to the car, he’d just had an great idea that was cracking him up. He backed up a few more steps until he was invisible, just out of the reach of the headlights. Then he walked back towards the brights, pretending that he didn’t know he was naked, trying to whistle through a mouth that was too dry. He tried telling himself a story instead.

". . .don't know why she wanted to come out here to screw around. . ." he started muttering, ". . .girl has me drive out here, we do some hard fucking out in the woods, then suddenly she's gone. . .was she even there. . .maybe she's playing some game. . .I don't know. I think we might have rolled into a puddle and that scared her away. She rolled off and disappeared, and now it’s taking forever to find my way back to the car. . .sweet! There it is! Good thing I left the headlights on and. . .AAAH!"

He stood in the headlights, looking down at the blood stain on his body, trying to act scared. Didn't sound right though. He tried again. He backed up into the dark until he was gone, then he walked slowly toward the highbeams trying to think of another story.

". . .what the hell, we sneak off to screw around and it feels like everything’s working. . .it feels like she's coming like a busted fire hydrant, screaming like it's the best thing ever, then she's silent, won't talk to me, even holding her breath like a little kid. So I roll off and leave her there pouting about whatever. Then I walk around, trying to get my brain back to find the car, and when I come back to her to ask what the hell is wrong, she thinks it's funny to stay quiet. She thinks it funny to curl up into a ball somewhere in the woods where I can't find her. So now I have to turn on the brights and point them into the dark so she can find her way back. I keep getting back into the car and turning the wheel to light up the trees. Piece by piece, like slicing a pie with a laser. And she still didn’t come back, so I got out and looked around again and now I’m walking into front of the car so I can see what is itching so bad and. . .AAAH!"

He looked down, eyes wide and exaggerated, smacking and scratching at the blood, trying to get it off. That story seemed to work a little better. He laughed and decided to try one more time, one more story to get it just right.

". . .okay, maybe she's doing something to herself, only it's too dark for me to see what she's doing. I can't see anything ‘cause she had to get out of the car. She said that she was shy and even the dashboard lights were too bright for her. She said she needed some time in the dark to get herself ready and don’t worry, she won’t try to get herself off. I guess that's what she did ‘cause I can't see anything and I can’t hear anything, and when I’m thinking I’m getting close, I hear her crawling away again. Then I get right up on her and we’re both naked in the dark and instead of a push or a punch, it feels like she just bit me in the guts to get me off her. Then she's gone so fast I don’t have time to think. It’s like a helicopter yanked her up into the sky. What the hell? She fly away? She really bite me? Then I sigh when I finally see the lights coming from the car and. . .AAAH!"
Then there was a voice right behind him and this time he really jumped.

"What are you doing?!?"

Busted.

Ashley's voice, from somewhere in the dark behind Steven and the car.

"What are you doing?" she asked again. He flinched as if her voice was a line-drive and he was caught with his fingers in the wrong holes of his baseball glove.

"Steve, seriously, what are you? Some kinda retard or something?"

Steven's heart hammered and skipped as he moved out of the headlights, covering the bloodstains over his groin with his hands. Then he quickly covered his genitals instead. Then, after a moment, he delegated one hand to each spot. He quickly ran to the car and reached in to turn off the headlights. Then he started walking a slow circle around the vehicle to stay away from her. She came out of the dark behind him and he jumped again. He started thinking that she was thinking that she was chasing him around like a bully in a high school locker room. He imagined her following him around the car, slapped at his bare ass, him running away like the smallest boy in the shower room.

They did three laps with him thinking:

How small do I look to her? Do I disappear when I’m naked?

The whole time she followed him, he heard wet towel cracks in his head, punctuation between everything she was saying:

"I don't get you." Crack! "I ask you to tell me one story back there and you freak." Crack! "Now you're out here like some nutjob, telling stories to yourself instead?" Crack! "What a loser." Crack! "That’s like jerking-off with your naked girlfriend sleeping in the next room." Crack!

The third time around the car, she reached in and yanked the headlight knob back on. He stopped so he wouldn’t walk through the light of the highbeams and then she was close enough to grab his arm.
"Your stories weren’t bad, you know that?" she went on, wrestling with his wrist and squinting to get a good look at him. "You could have used one of those stories on me. You just wasted them on yourself." His arm was thin and sweaty and she had to squeeze as hard as she could to keep a grip.

"Like trying to fish with your hands. . ." she mumbled through her teeth.

There was a squeak of wet skin like basketball shoes on a sweat covered gymnasium and one of her finger nail drew a deep scratch down his forearm.

". . .or your feet."

Steven winced. She smiled and her hand relaxed. It was true. She’d suspected it when she first saw his arm hanging out the window of his car and now she knew it was true.

She was stronger than he was.
Her fingers moved down and around his body, finding the blood on his lower stomach, then a couple drying scabs on the insides of his legs, then a warm spot under his balls where it felt like it would never dry. Steven squirmed out of her reach and backpedaled, laughing nervously while she whispered:

"Remind me to tell you about when I was a little girl and I made a blood bomb. . ."

She was a little bigger and still the smallest thing in the neighborhood. She was sitting in the wet grass by the hose, feeling the cold water soak into the back pockets of her blue jeans and she tried to remember if there were any rabbit drawings back there that were getting ruined. She watched the boys fill up their water balloons and stack them carefully in shirts that they stretched out in front of themselves like hammocks. They walked away slowly, leaning back like pregnant women, each choosing their corner of the yard to prepare for the biggest water balloon war in history. She watched them fill balloon after balloon, tying off the ends and elbowing each other in anticipation. She would sigh when they’d fumble the knots and have to start over, or kick at a tree when they’d overfill one until it burst and wasted a bomb on themselves. It felt like the war would never start. She waited until the last boy, the smallest boy, was filling his balloons, and then ran for the hose. She stared at him to make him nervous enough to drop a balloon and finally he asked for her help. She crawled over to eagerly take over the trigger on the hose. When the boy turned to see if everyone had started without him, she quickly removed a special balloon she’d hidden in her shirt and added it to his pile. Then she climbed a tree to wait for him to throw it, apologizing to a face-like knot for kicking it in the trunk earlier. Her balloon was easy to keep track of, it was the only pink one in the battle, since the boys never filled those, and she’d also drawn a smiley face on it with a magic marker. It was stacked in his arsenal, resting on his ripped shirt in the shade, on his corner of the yard. She had time to think back to the night before, when she defrosted five steaks from the freezer to get enough blood to fill her balloon. She frowned as she remembered squeezing the meat, then, in desperation, having to crack open a can of strawberry pie filling to stuff inside. And still the balloon didn’t look round enough. She had made such a mess, cramming bloody ice and strawberry gore into the neck of that balloon, that the sun was coming up while she was still cleaning and finding evidence in the cracks of everything. Now she was up in the tree, yawning and trying to stay awake long enough for the payoff. She imagined the looks on their faces when the balloon would burst. She laughed and wondered if, even for just a moment, the boys in the war would thinking that someone was really hurt, that maybe someone had thrown a real bomb. A perfect shot and a burst of red and they might think someone’s head came off. They might even think someone was dead. She stopped yawning and looked for her balloon. Her boy’s pile was almost down to the smiley face. She felt proud watching him run back and forth, holding his own in spite of his size, grabbing balloons and throwing them with deadly accuracy. Finally he had her pink balloon in his hand and she held her breath as he wound up to throw it. It caught another boy square in the mouth and knocked him down. She started crying. It didn’t explode. . .

"Sorry," he said. "I can't tell you a story or whatever it is you want. Is that what you want? I think that now I just want. . ."

She reached out and flicked him in the lips to shut him up and he didn't even see her do it. He looked around for a bug instead.

"We have to go." she whispered. "There’s someone out here and it’s not James." He finally looked up. "No bullshit, I think there’s someone in the trees."

He was rubbing his mouth as she took his hand and pulled him back to the car. They got inside and crawled into the back seat. Steven relaxed. The back seat of the car felt safe, like it was where a boy and a girl were supposed to be.

She put the key in the ignition and the green and orange dashlights faded in like a movie, lighting up their faces with a sickly end-of-the-world glow. Steven blinked, looked around the car, then closed his eyes for good. The colors of the dashboard lights felt like radiation to him and it was making him dizzy. Ashley frowned and kissed an eyelid to try to coax it back open. Echoing in his ears were the sounds of naked skin catching and popping and squeaking on the vinyl as she got as close as she could and things got tangled up and glued with sweat.

"Once there was a boy and a girl. . ."

She decided the time was perfect for a story and she scratched and rubbed his cold salt and blood-slicked skin, her fingers moving from bump to scab, picked and grinding them loose. Some of the blood flew off in dusty flakes and some mixed with the sweat and heat and friction and started to melt on her fingers.

". . .and they're in the back seat of a car, seems like they’re always in the backseat of a car, don’t it?"

Ashley guided Steven's cold sticky fingers down, moving a thumb in small circles until something down there swelled and became unstuck and her blood was running again moving inside her body and outside on his.

". . .and the boy felt something weird inside her, it reminded him of a summer job when some fiberglass got into the sunburn on the backs of his hands. . ."

Steven pushed two more fingers a knuckle-length deeper and, in spite of his lack of experience, he thought it did feel strange. Like he was pulling on a glove filled with sand and raspberry preserves. He didn't know what fiberglass felt like. But now that he thought about it, he had filled a baseball mitt with peanut-butter and jelly once to get out of playing a T-ball tournament.

". . .she started telling him a story, a story about the last time she was with a boy in that car. She told the boy, yeah, there were two boys and one girl and that’s the worst, and she told the first boy she got alone that there were spiders nesting under the back seat, she told him that she got bit all over, and she wasn't sure but she thought that they may have dropped some eggs inside her too. . ."

Steven quickly pulled his three fingers out.

". . .so the boy gets scared and pushes himself off. . ." She shoved him back so hard he smacked his head on the roof. ". . .and he fights his way out the door as fast as he can. "

She reached behind him and hit the door handle, kicking him out onto his ass with both feet. He hit the stones shaken but laughing in surprise. He thought he knew where her story was going. And, at the same time, he wondered if she was changing the story because he'd just pulled his fingers out.

". . .and she starts the engine and turns the headlights on," she started the engine and turned the headlights on. ". . .and at that moment he was running in front of the car."

She leaned out the window and pointed to where he should go.

"Running in front of the car. . ." Ashley repeated, snapping her fingers impatiently.

Steven sighed and got to his feet, brushing the sharp gravel from his knees. He walked into the lights, his red-streaked erection smacking from leg to leg. She gunned the motor and he froze in the beams.

". . .and that's when he looked down. . ." She paused for effect. ". . .and screamed!" Steven tried to smile and shook his head instead. He looked down, trying to act shocked, opened his mouth to try screaming again and stopped. The world had slowed as he stared down at his small body glowing in the eyes of the car.

His erection was at three o’clock, going down fast. He counted ten seconds with the beat of his pulse and it was at five o'clock now, on it's way to six. He walked over to the window to ask her some questions. It was at six o’clock when he leaned in the window. It was gone by the time he started to speak, head down and dead, limp and swinging like a lynching after everyone has gone home.

"So, why is he screaming? Why am I screaming?" He asked her as he covered himself with one clawed hand.

"Does he see blood? Or is he covered in spiders? I don’t get it." He couldn’t resist a joke right then:

"And can I see your driver’s license and registration please?"

"No. No. No." Ashley banged her skull back against the headrest and pumped the gas pedal in frustration. She reached out and grabbed his mouth. "He screams, "you fucked some other boy in my car?" Get it?"

He nodded and grinned at the punchline and was moving between the beams to hide when she suddenly opened the door and ran to tackle him. They rolled in the dust and stones laughing until the rocks sticking to their naked bodies started to hurt. They sat up and began flicking the shrapnel off palms and elbows and knees at each other’s faces. They were coughing and laughing and catching their breath, winding back down.

"I know you." Steven said when they’d run out of rocks. "You're one of those girls that thinks jealousy is cute. Ain't ya? One of those goddamn girls that asks, "are you jealous?" while you're smiling. Am I right? Why don’t girls realize that saying those three words while they’re smiling through their teeth feels worse than if you heard them say "I love you" over some other dude’s shoulder while he’s fucking her? Is that you? You think that’s something to smile about? Huh? Do you?"

No answer and Ashley held his eyes for too long. He wished for a rearview mirror between them. He was sure that he could win any staring contest as long as the eyes were fighting it out in a mirror.

How do you make a mirror? Steven thought as his eyes watered, the urge to blink overpowering. Someone told me once when I was little that all you do is hold any piece of glass over a fire and it turns into a mirror. Buncha shit and I believed it long enough to burn both my hands and wreck three pairs of my grandpa’s reading glasses.

Outside he could hear something rustling in the weeds again and he imagined the cat-tails whipping in the wind like the ass-end of a stray cat, working itself into the ground, winding up, ready to jump for a bird or a frog or the pulsing yellow heartbeat of a firefly writing something in the dark.
She still wasn’t blinking and now his eyes felt like they were bleeding.

He looked down.

There was a glowing red cross in the distance.

At first they thought that it was high up in one of the trees like a Christmas decoration, then they realized that it was miles away, at the top of a hill on the horizon. Steven said that he remembered seeing it a long time ago, maybe above a falling rock zone on the highway.

"That’s where it is, yeah, I did see it," he decided, "Right above the interstate, a mile before the river. I know because of all the wreathes along those guardrails."

"For a minute I was worried you were going to say that the cross was put there for us," Ashley said. "Since you didn’t, I guess I could believe you."

"Serious. I saw it last winter and I thought it was creepy then. A red cross? Little too close to a flaming cross, you know? Someone said that they light those things to mark the spot over a car crash. Makes sense, considering all the wrecks on that turn."

"How many wrecks?"

"I don’t know. At least three. I’ve seen two wreathes, about five crosses, and, at the bottom of the turn where you should be riding your brakes, there’s a plot of dirt in the shape of a heart, with a big white T-bone planted right in the center of it."

"That’s more disturbing than a red cross on a hill." Ashley said through a pinched face. "I think people are getting carried away with those things, all those flowers and pictures and stuffed animals getting rained on with gum and snuff and cigarette butts and everything else that people spit out their window getting stuck in their fur. That’s way more freaky and sad."

"Why’s that?"

"You know what a little kid will be thinking? When they see an elaborate memorial like that? They are going to think that. . .if you die in a car crash. . .they bury you right there. . .on the side of the fucking road. Tell me that ain’t the first thing you’d think if you were nine, in the back seat of a car, wet nose against the glass."

"Maybe."

Another noise outside the car and Steven was rolling down the window.

"Who the fuck is out there?!?" he yelled.

"She walked through the corn, leading down to the river. . ." Ashley sang.

"What?"

"You never heard that song? "Fox On The Run?" The original, not the new song. That’s the only part I remember, "she walked through the corn. . ." She started to sing again.

"Sounds familiar I guess. You know, you can’t have a song like that anymore."

"Why not?"

"Because you’d have to see a girl walking through some corn to write a song about it, and that’s something you’ll never see."

"What are you babbling about? You can see a girl walking through a cornfield any day of the week."

"Okay, when is the last time you did it?"

"Shut up. Get your head back in here." She breathed hard on the window and traced a heart in the vapor before it was gone. "So who do you think is running around out there?"

"I know who it is."

"James right? So what? Let’s give him something to spy on."

"No, that thing out there, it’s too small to be James. It’s something else."

"Who?"

Steven realized who it was as he said the words:

"The boy who used live in our boat. The pirate, the first captain of the ship. The boy who made the flag that we took down. I should have figured he’d find us eventually."

"You’re crazy, c’mere." She tried to pull him close and he sunk down in the seat and moved away instead.
"Just keep talking, okay?" he said, still looking outside. "That’s what I want right now." His voice had something honest in it and she blinked in surprise and sat back with her knees up over her chest.

"Fine. Let me think. Alright, there is this one thing I was thinking about. You know what story you never hear? The one about the boy who pays for a third of an abortion. You’ve heard the old story about the boy who pays for half, that happens every fifteen minutes in this country, but you never hear about three people forced to try to figure out their share of the bill. I dodged that bullet once and I kept thinking about what I would do. That’s what you guys don’t understand. You feel sorry for us when we’re on the rag and you don’t understand, sometimes blood in the toilet is such a relief. It’s such a strange thing. I’ll bet you’ve never stood over a toilet, bleeding with a smile on your face. Am I right? That’s something only a girl knows about." She breathed deep and seemed to notice him for the first time. Again. He was leaning close and reaching to touch what seemed to be a sticky tangle of gum and hair on her hip-bone.

"What’s that?"

"This?" She looked down and pulled some hairs from the spot. "That’s just my tattoo. Well, it’s the spot where my tattoo would have been anyway. See, I had an extra fifty bucks from working the 4th of July and it was just enough money to get either a tattoo, or another round of birth control patches."

"Why does it have to be one or the other? There’s a million things you can get with fifty bucks."

"I know, it’s just that it can’t be a coincidence that both things cost exactly the same amount of money, and both things would have been stuck in exactly the same spot on my body. That’s got to mean something, right?"

"Maybe." Steven agreed. "Hell, I would even go so far as to say that both things would have the same effect on anyone who saw them. Any dude that would catch a glimpse down there when you reached for something high."

"You might have a point." She picked at the spot in question and inspected the color of a hair she found. "Anyhow, that’s the goo they leave behind when you pull them off too fast."

"How do you pull off a tattoo? You get it out of a cereal box?"

"No stupid, I’m talking about the patch. I yank it and leave it off and pow! I get my period the next day. It’s so bizarre, these things that we do to ourselves just to fuck. Can you imagine the massive amounts of chemicals it takes to fuck with my body like that?"

"You probably took five years off your life and you’ll never know."

"What?" She frowned. "Fuck you, Steve, it ain’t that bad.’ She kicked at him. "So c’mon! What story can you tell?" she demanded. "Your turn, goddammit."

"What, a story with blood in it? I don't know. You want a story to go with your blood on my stomach? How about. . .uhhh. . .I could hang onto the back bumper and pretend that I was all bloody ‘cause I got dragged around behind the car and you could get in it and tap the brake pedal to get the red lights blinking and I could run back behind it screaming for you to stop and making car noises and. . .fuck it never mind."

She started getting out of the car, one bare foot on the ground when he pulled her back inside, harder than he had to.

"Wait, I got something. It’s not really a story, just something that I’ve been thinking about. Just now, while you were telling your story. I call it The Firing Squad."

"Go on."

"Okay, let’s say you got a girl who’s knocked-up and the two of you decide to get an abortion. That’s heavy so you decide to make yourself feel better in the worst possible way. What you do is, you get your girl to admit that she fucked around on you. You tell her that it would be okay for her to admit it, because then, you could think in the back of your head that the baby that gets aborted wasn’t even yours. Sure, there’s a chance that it’s yours, but it’ll be easier to swallow if she was fucking something else. It’s like the one man in the firing squad when they do executions. You ever heard about that? How they always give one man a blank bullet for his gun? That way he can live with it, and he can tell himself that maybe he didn’t kill anything. Then, after she admits she fucked him, and the baby is gone forever, you tell her that it was just your way of getting her to confess, and you don’t give two fucks about dead babies and if you were really in a firing squad and you realized you had an empty bullet in your gun, I’d just fire another shot. And then say "fuck you" and leave that fucking cheating fuck forever."

"I heard that it’s a squirt gun." Ashley mumbled, deep in thought.

"What?"

"For those firing squads. I heard that it isn’t blanks they give one of those guys. It’s a squirt gun. A very realistic one."

"Shut the fuck up." Steven laughed. "That would never work. He’d see the water dribble out the end of it."

"Not if they were close enough. And not if it was filled with blood. Remind me to tell you. . ."

Ashley trailed off and he saw her actually biting her tongue.

Steven shook his head, hesitating to laugh because she was remembering something and she looked like she was going to cry. He didn’t comfort her, because he was remembering something too, and now they were even.

"So when does James get back?" she asked.

"Any second now," he answered.

"We should try to scare him."

"What about what we..." Steven trailed off and his hand covered himself again. "Fine. How do we scare him?"
Ashley shoved her way out and jumped up and climbed onto the hood of the car. Excited, eyes glowing with a new idea, she spread her legs wide and said:

"Think about how this would look. He won't be able to get his brain around it. You down there, the blood on you, the blood on me, the blood everywhere..."

"There isn't that much blood. There never is. There isn’t right now." She almost sounded disappointed. "It’ll still freak him out. Shit, the only thing creepier would be for him to walk up and see a dog going down on me." She seemed to shock herself for a second. "A huge black dog, slobbering and licking away. Ew, nasty. Did I just say that out loud? I can’t tell."

"Why does the dog always got to be black?" he asked.

"What?"

"Nothing. Bad joke."

"Or maybe you and the dog both down there," she went on. "Fighting to get your heads in there. A dog would do that nasty shit too, that’s why they always lick exactly what they’re supposed to in the movies. Because they slap peanut butter and blood on it. That’s kind of scary though, you think a dog can be trusted not to bite? I'd worry that the dog would think that the blood in that peanut butter meant meat. . ."

For the first time, Steven found himself tuning her out.

". . .remind me to tell you about when I was a girl and. . ."

"Aren’t you still a girl?" He said it too quiet to be answered. He heard almost nothing, her voice was the white noise between radio stations. And even though she was clicking her knees together while she rambled, arching her ass for a good view every few seconds, he couldn't hear the words. He couldn’t stop staring at something else. She reached out and flicked his ear to get his attention.
". . .and when we drove this car up this hill, the angle of the headlights were on the tops of the trees. . ."
He thought about when you push a car stereo button halfway in so that it slides between nothing but static and hiss.

". . .and I saw a little boy sitting up there. I was going to say something and I guess I should have because it sound like the little fucker has been stalking us all night. . ."

He couldn’t look away, he heard something about the boy and didn’t even check her eyes to see if she was lying.

". . .hey, remind me to tell you. . ."

He stared down until the static of her voice was almost completely gone, and the only thing left was her feet. She tried flicking him in the nose.

More of her words were getting through and he actually reached out and bent the antenna on the car to keep her voice out of his head.

". . .I said, remind me to. . ."

In frustration, she flicked him in the eye. Now he was looking. However, before she had finished her last story, he was looking down again.

"Remind me to tell you about when I was a girl and I made a blood gun. . ."

Her voice was gone now. All he saw was her feet. Glowing red, skeleton visible through the skin, toes curling in front of the headlights.

She was old enough to be in love and small enough to still think of herself as a little girl. She was in the back seat of his brother’s car again. They were too young to drive it, only too old to be hiding in it. She thought that this boy loved her and she just needed to find a way to prove it. The last time she’d fallen asleep in the back of his brother’s car, she woke up to find that he was writing on her naked back with his finger. She had tried to figure out what he was writing but he was doing it way too fast to keep up with the letters. Later she lifted her shirt for him again and he wrote on her back right on cue. Slower, and he used an ice cube like she’d asked. She wanted ice because she was hoping that the cold water on her skin would make it easier to feel what he was writing. It did. However, the problem was that, when he knew she was awake, he only wrote things on her back that didn’t matter. Like their names or the number of his favorite baseball player or a quick game of Tic-tac-toe that he’d somehow manage to lose against himself. Tonight she had an idea. She showed him the squirt gun that was hidden under the back seat. A toy gun his brother had painted like a real gun to scare anyone in a high school road rage situation. She told him how she’d filled it up and how, instead of using his finger, he should write on her with the gun this time. Then she sighed and seemed to change her mind and said she "just got real tired all the sudden." Eventually, after almost an hour of fake sleeping and deep breathing, which surprised her by being one of the hardest things she’d ever tried to do, she heard him go for the gun. She lied still, counting the seconds between breaths, and she hoped that it was dark enough for her plan to work. The night before she’d filled the squirt gun with blood. Blood from food? Blood from the toilet? Blood from her finger? She couldn’t remember. All she knew was, if he started writing on her again, she’d be able to read it the next day as soon as she stepped out of the car into the sunlight. She heard the trigger creak and felt the warm pulse of the words on her back. She tried hard to keep her breathing steady so he wouldn’t stop shooting. Then, after fifteen shots, enough to fill the clip of a nine-millimeter, she heard him suck in his breath, fire one more splash onto the dragon-ridge of her spine and then quickly get out of the car. She stayed perfectly still, falling asleep for real as she waited for him to come back, waiting for his words to dry tight on her skin. He never came back. And in the morning she stood outside rubbing a sore neck from trying to read her what he’d left on her back in one of the side-view mirrors. She was crying. Maybe because the blood had smeared in the middle and she couldn’t tell whether it read "I love you" or "I loved you." When she found the car locked and empty the next three weekends in a row, the squirt gun crushed under one of the tires, she realized she had her answer.

"I know someone who filled a squirt gun full of blood once." Steven said after her story was finally over.

"Everyone does that. It was worse than a real gun. The kid that got shot really thought he got shot. It was when I was in fifth grade and-"

Ashley was up on her elbows, then on her hands.

"Shhh! C’mere quick! Someone's coming!"

Steven blinked and shook his head to focus.

"You really want me to?"

"Yes."

He shrugged, sucked in a breath and held it in his throat and figured why the hell not?

He worked his head in tight where her legs started. When he needed to breathe, he backed up off her to get a good look.

In his short life, he’d never seen something that needed his mouth on it as urgently. It was like a ripe red apple. Just sliced. Wet and angry and visibly pulsing with her heartbeat.

He went back down and stayed down. He breathed deep and tasted blood and sweat, salt and copper. His jaw twitched, ready to snap like a rat-trap. He was hungry.

Meat. It really was just a piece of meat.

Then he started to think back to what she’d said about the dog and he stifled a gag. For a second he thought about throwing up between her knees.

How would that look? Worse than this?

He wondered if she would be shocked, if she could be shocked. He wondered how long she would remember something like a splash of vomit down there.

Every color of the rainbow. Bright colors on insects mean they’re poisonous. . .

Behind them, stones were crunching under heavy footsteps.

Steven grabbed the back of his own head so no one else would and he pulled his own face up out of her.

James was standing there in the highbeams, eyes pinched and waiting for the shadows to take shape. Steven watched his expression change as things slowly focused for him and his eyes swelled as he took in what was happening. He dropped the bottle of Tequila he’d gone down the road to look for. It hit the ground with a clank and didn't break like it should have.

Steven turned to face him. He spit something red in his direction, watched James jump back, and, for a crazy second, thought that whatever had been in his mouth was going to crawl away when it landed. Then Steven took three quick steps forward until he was nose-to-nose with his best friend. James’ eyes and nostrils flared together, taking in the sights and smells of the scene. He leaned in to sniff the glaze covering Steven's wicked clown grin. Then James looked over Steven’s shoulder and saw Ashley, knees open, bloody handprints and comet-trails exploding from the vanishing point between her legs, drumming her fingers loud on the metal hood of the car. James shook his head and finally seemed to think of something to say.

"Dude, when you go down on a girl, don't use your teeth."



- © 2003 david james keaton

::: david - 10:01 PM [+] :::
...

“the ratio of people to cake is not sufficient...”
- Milton from "Office Space"

saw a free concert on the North Shore of Pittsburgh today. first it was going to be Hootie so i wasn’t that interested, but then at the last minute i found out it was Cake so it was worth checking out. good show. they sound great live and they have an actual horn player (for some reason i just assumed that their horn sounds were a synthesizer) and the lead singer has an infectious laid-back happy thing going on. he looked down at the V.I.P. seats that were blocked off and half full and suggested that the rest of the crowd swarm the area. about one song later i was moving with a group of people over the barricades and standing on one of those V.I.P. seats. funny as hell. the rich pricks had to stand up to see for once. people must have been trying to do something else up there because the singer started saying, “hey people, let’s all look at the progress we just made and be happy with that, let’s not push it to far and instead we can, like, be content with what we have achieved this evening.” it was a good time. if those V.I.P. seats would have been filled, if the ratio of people to Cake would have been sufficient, then maybe that revolt would not have happened. maybe a lesson will be learned and they won’t waste so much space in front of the stage next time. anyway, it was worth every dollar. wait, it only cost a dollar. wait, that’s what i’m saying.

there was also this guy yelling “shut the fuck up!” and that was funny enough, but then it turned out that it was actually the name of a song that he was requesting. it would have been funnier if it wasn’t.

oh yeah, two girls that were up on people’s shoulders flashed their tits to show their appreciation for their favorite song and i started thinking, isn’t that a strange way to show your approval? i tried it while driving the other day (this is 100% true) and i pulled my dick out when a particularly good song came on the radio. i yanked it out and said in a conversational tone, “you know, this is a really good song,” and the girl next to me just shook her head. maybe i need to be on someone’s shoulders for it to be less awkward.

and what’s up with the lead singer? he was cracking me up. he seemed to be fascinated by 1.) the Bayer clock advertisement on the hill, 2.) the lighted cable-car coming down the same hill, 3.) the big water fountain and 4.) fireflies! he was saying, “wow, we don’t have those in northern California!" is that true? are fireflies that exotic? i wonder if he thought they could sting. i wish they could. any crazy bug that fucking LIGHTS UP should be able to sting you, ya know?

people kept saying to use these past couple of days to write something, and when i would hear that i would get annoyed thinking, “why the hell would i want to write about THAT?” so i worked on a different story instead. now i’ve looked back and i can see that, even though it's saying nothing specific about the incident, that’s obviously what it is all about. oops. i’ll be posting it tomorrow. it’s called “Squirt Guns and Firing Squads” and it's better than the last thing you read, i swear. if not i’ll give you your time back by playing with your watch when you aren’t looking.

i noticed a bunch of dead raccoons on the road this past week and every single one of them was against the barrier in the middle of a divided highway. i was thinking, why not take a jack-hammer and bust some holes in those barriers every couple of feet? you know, like those cartoon mouse holes, so that the animals wouldn’t hit the barrier, get confused, run sniffing along it until they turned back and POW! i think their odds for survival would go up if they could keep their forward momentum going, see what i’m saying?

now that i think about it, that applies to humans too. odds for survival stay up as long as you have forward momentum.

::: david - 6:14 PM [+] :::
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