Black Friday; Part 1

                                                                 WALTER

Looking down at the myriad of shattered plastic and electronic bits that only moments ago comprised his phone, Walter realized that perhaps he overreacted a bit to the news of his firing from yet another job.

So he calmly walked over to the owner of the stereotypically dubious head shop and apologized for his outburst and the whole kicking in of his window.

Surely, he thought, the gash that he had along his ankle was fair trade in the big scheme of things, but he knew the owner far too well and knew that he would see the matter differently.

So with that thought in mind, he handed the clerk his last hundred bucks and hobbled on his way, leaving the bits of his shattered phone, but having the decency to take his shattered existence with him.

He made his way into the worn down, “Kermit the frog” green,  Honda Civic and began to putter his way home.

On his drive, he began pondering how foolish his handling's of recent matters had been. How he truly had only himself to blame for the current state and shape of things.

Had he not been such a hider, he’d have been able to walk up to Carla and approach her like a normal human being instead of finding her e-mail and sending her notes like a damned fifth grade boy.

Had he not been such a hider, He would have managed not to embarrass himself on their one and now only date by getting a tad too drunk for tactfulness.

Were he not so callow, he would have summoned the mettle to return to work, shame be damned.

If only he weren’t such a hider, he would have had the stones to notify work of his absence, instead of remaining silent and getting canned via messages.

It was at this point, that Walter Ivy decided he would hide no longer, but simply disappear altogether. 

That he would hit the bar down the street from his house for a few hours, the only one left in town that was still dumb enough to run him a tab, and later it would be off to cost mart to purchase some rope.
Luckily it was still "Black Friday"  and the item would more than likely be on sale, and it's not as if their would be a rush on rope for Christmas gifts.

"Hopefully"  he thought, "I won’t fuck this up."

                                                            LEONARD

As the cheap linoleum became permanently stained with the freshly pured claret of his former beloved, Leonard began to wonder if he would have to replaced the entire floor in his tiny, shitty water closet.

The blood combined with the axe that was now stuck in the cheap material made it seem to be a certainty to him.

Who would’ve guessed his rage would carry his actions so forcefully that the instrument would shred through her skull  like the thrashes of Mick Thompson’s guitar rifts through an elderly person's earlobes.

This fine mess, coupled with the still smoldering, blackened white corpse that once stood as his beloved’s beloved  in the laundry room, would make for quite an arduous cleansing for our man, especially at three-thirty in the morning.
He chuckled at the newly imprinted memory of watching her lean in too close to the still burning corpse and catching fire herself. 


That stupid, mouth agape "donkey face" of hers that resided as her permanent look finally changing into that of utter terror and panic.
Those final moments of her wretched existence spent knowing that she played no one as the fool she thought Leonard was, she found out that everything you do under the cover of darkness will inevitably come under the judgement of the light.


 Leonard was happy to be such an illumination for her and her scumbag boyfriend, happy to usher them into the afterlife and out of his world.
Now that they were no longer a problem, the world was his to conquer, but first he must address this mess. 

So he set forth for the cost mart, the place that never closes, for the late night emergencies such as this one.

                                                               ARNOLD

“Maybe you shouldn’t learn things if you’re gonna be so disruptive.”

The words from the television echoed through Arnold’s ears.

He’d have never guessed that the most profound societal comment would come from his favorite societal escape, Malcolm in the middle.

The words shot through him much the way he imagined they were supposed to hit the character of the youngest son , Dewey, upon hearing them from the teacher reprimanding a hyper active child for becoming overly excited upon learning about the Doppler effect.

“Maybe you shouldn’t learn things if you’re gonna be so disruptive.”

He flashed back to his time in middle school and when he first learned the truth behind the relationship between the puritan settlers and the original inhabitants of this land.

He grew so enraged that he walked up to the front of the classroom and pulled down the American flag in an attempt to stomp on it.

Thankfully, his history teacher was an ex-marine and full of enough civic pride to throw a meaningful right cross to an uppity twelve year old to protect his colors.

 Mr. Gerris’ actions were supported by both the faculty and Arnold’s father, he was viewed to be in the right for protecting the flag from a confused anti-American child.

“Maybe you shouldn’t learn things if you’re gonna be so disruptive.”

Back again, to when he was in high school and his favorite teacher , Mr. Cary, introduced him to the night time radio program of Mr. Art Bell.

The following  weeks brought on a sea of sleep depravity and  conspiracy theories so vast that he was hospitalized for a month after his nervous breakdown in the middle of fourth period. Poor Dana Wadsager’s face would never shine quite the same way ever again after it incurred Arnold’s vomitous anguish.

“Maybe you shouldn’t learn things if you’re gonna be so disruptive.”

When he was twenty one and he learned that his father was not his true blood and that his mother tried to kill him twice as an infant, were it not for his grandparents walking in both times, she would have succeeded and he would  have been no more, long ago.

This new found knowledge inspired him to climb the nearest water tower with his sniper rifle, and although he hadn’t the courage to fire, spending an entire day watching the potential dead through his scope, made him feel a tad better.

Until he slipped the trigger and put one right through the skull of an elderly woman that was walking her terrier through the park on that fateful day. For months after that, every person he saw was followed by the vision of the pink mist that he would never forget.

“maybe you shouldn’t learn things if you’re gonna be so disruptive.”

To yesterday, where he learned that he was to be replaced  at his job by someone the boss was just trying to keep silent about his after hours indiscretions after the person was fortunate enough to catch him in the moment.

To make things worse, not only was he to be replaced, but his termination was to follow immediately.

Though he appreciated the head’s up from his friend in the higher offices, he wished he could have just let it happen so he could implode accordingly.

Instead now, Arnold thought, he has all the time he needs for his enraged mind to put a plan into action. He thought to himself,

“Maybe I should  learn a few more things if I plan to be so disruptive.”

                                                 ALFRED AND HORACE

The damage intended had been much more than adequately done as the tooth now lay broken on the kitchen floor in several small chunks.

Horace held his mouth and stared at his bombastic twin brother in disbelief of his actions.

“That was my tooth” he exclaimed, “I told you I specifically wanted that one for a good reason you asshole!"

"I haven’t gotten a male incisor yet, I would’ve thought that with all the effort it took to extract it cleanly that you would have acted with a bit more caution, but I guess that’s what I get for leaving matters in you’re hands brother.”

Alfred, cool, calm and rather cold customer that he always was, slowly got his pliers off the table, got up from his chair and made his way back down to the basement muttering to himself,  “ I’ll take care of it you fucking brat”.

Al ignored his barely younger sibling’s calls of anger and self-serving kvetching as he strolled back down to the sub ground lair that contained all that is of the brothers Tornatorio’s true selves.

The old basement was intentionally well kept up, the room basically divided on either side for each one’s respective “trophies” in their domestic dungeon, except of course for the cage, chair and large stone that all sat right in the middle of the room.

As Alfred entered the darkened room, the heat lamps cut on due to the motion sensors and the wretched, blood baptized, barely living form of Percival Blackstone weakly perked his head up.

As he lay across the stone,  the ruin to his once top flight human form sit on display for Al to cherish for a moment.

His scalp was missing chunks  due to his backtalk while Horace was lovingly trimming his hair.

His mouth was now a wad of red and pink silly putty from tooth removal and Alfred’s fist fucking.

The two holes drilled into his midsection to anchor him to the boulder now showed grave signs of infection, along with the stump that now comprised his left leg after Al wanted to see if his sawzall needed to be replaced.

It did, but being that the leg was already half off, Al had the good grace  to take his hedge clippers and finish it off so he could stop the bleeding with a hot iron pressed into the wound. Sadly though , that did little for the sake of infection, but he knew that soon that would matter very little to anyone involved.

So Al stood over his subject’s form and gave him a moment to try to speak, just for sadism’s sake.

His mangled face combining forces with his gnawed up, sad excuse for a tongue to try uttering something, anything that may save him from his agonizingly apparent fate.

All that his beaten psyche and mangled voice box could find to say was,

“Wha  Ab ewe owing thibt?”

Al slyly smiled and strolled over to his tool shed, looking for just the right implement to provide his answer.

He passed over his many tools containing so many more memories.

There was the sledgehammer he used to bash in the lifelines of Freddy White and Xavier Landry, he chuckled as he was reminded of Freddy pissing himself in his pleading final moments.

Then of course, there was the old pair of their fathers police issue riot gloves he had used to tenderize and even finish off many a subject.

  

One time, he punched Paul Adamson in the groin so hard, so many times that he had basically rendered him a living ken doll.

In the midst of this thought, his mind abruptly halted by the finding of the weapon chosen long ago for this man’s demise.

The aluminum bat from Al’s little league days, had been chosen for this task the day twelve years ago when Percy caught the game winning fly ball off of it.

Making Percy the hero of that day and unknowingly  making Alfred the villain of this one.

Using his typical methodical means, he used the bat  to usher his one time friend abruptly into the next life, when chaos arose.

As he was delivering one of the finite blows, the aluminum finally cracked due to age and his victim’s skull.

This did not cease Alfred’s attack in the least however, and a disastrously beautiful collage of carnage ensued.
Chunks of skull met with dark splashes of claret and skin while shards of metal flutter throughout the portrait of punishment.

Horace was moved to tears so much so that it greatly affected his video taping of the event, he even had to stroke himself a bit after some of the blood splattered onto his arm.

Finally, exhausted from his rage, Alfred stopped long enough to let the man expire.

Looking at his stub handle of a bat, all he could think to say was “Fuck, now I have to run to  the cost mart , do you know how fucking annoying it is to have to go to that place!??”

“You’re coming with me ass head!” he exclaimed, flicking the tooth at his brother as he stormed out of the room.

                                                                 CHUCK

As the box of feminine pads ricocheted off his head, the cantankerous words of his immediate superior echoed lowly through the tiny mind of one Charles Hayes.

 The words “Move faster, you box tossing ape!” never sounded more professional than from the voice box of Mr. Chad Stokes.

A white trash wasp, if there ever was one,  who kissed the right backsides to get the dubious honor over overseeing the Unloading team, widely seen as the armpit of cost mart.

 Of course it probably didn’t hurt that his mother held sway in the upper offices of the store as well.

Chuck simply glanced over needfully at his best friend and in many ways personal hero, Arnold, looking for his friend to interject on his behalf, as he normally does.

But Arnie seemed to be suffering from lows Chuck could never understand, and it began to show on his pal’s face that his "soul blackout" was wearing on his being.

This would have to be considered one of Chuck’s most profound thoughts, despite his ability to grasp it entirely. 

He stood facing the pallets that upheld his so-called lively hood, his anguish and rage falling in the shadows of his perplexion and feelings of inferiority.

All our once proud all state guard for Robert Evans high school could think to do was sob, punching out at his cardboard retainers with all his two-hundred and ninety pounds could muster.

This caused Arnold to glance over at his dear friend, and his face told of all the apologies of the world for his place in it.

Just as the truck was finishing up, he noticed as they were heading off to break that Arnold had a folded stack of papers under his arm.

Arnold calmly walked up to his comrade, looked him sternly in the eyes and uttered the words that would ripple off onto so very many more lives than that of the two sharing them.

“Chuck, there is something I think we need to talk about buddy.”