Today, I'd like to share "Jumping In," a story originally published in Slices of Flesh. Happy reading and even happier weekend.
"Jumping
In"
by
Aaron Polson
Nick skips out
on the game during the third quarter and heads for the shadowed trees on the
other side of the parking lot. He goes because the older boys, the cool kids
Derek Hullinger, Smack Willits, and B-rad Tibbits are there, smoking GPC
cigarettes and lacing every sentence with superfluous “fucks” and “shits” like
a bunch of Marine Corps jarheads on leave. Nick braves the shadows and trees
because he wants to be something. Derek told Nick to come, promising a chance
to show his stuff. A chance to be somebody and join the team.
Who gives a shit
if B-rad and Smack are nineteen and still in high school? And nobody mentions
Derek Hullinger’s name without a little bit of fear. Nick wants that. He wants
to be something the other kinds at Jefferson East fear, especially those
testosterone amped jock-assholes on the football team.
The shadows and
tall trees on the other side of the stadium scared Nick when he was a kid, but
not now. Hell no. This is his chance to roll with Derek, to get some genuine
respect. It’s quiet at the edge of the woods, strangely so less than a hundred
yards from the stadium and jeering fans, less than a football field from the
actual field with its lights and sprayed on-lines.
The little kid
in Nick holds his breath. He was afraid of monsters ten years ago, now he wants
to be one. The too-pissed-off-to-care teenage Nick stomps on dead leaves and
snaps twigs under his feet. When he feels like it’s all over, like the
blackness of the trees have eaten the world, a little orange glow shows him the
way.
B-rad flips his
Zippo open and shut, lighting the flame in one motion. Click, click, click.
“Nicky. What’s
the good word?” Derek smells of cigarettes and whiskey and day-old sex.
Nick squints. The
shadows work magic with the others’ faces. Nick imagines a spare—four instead
of the three he’d expected.
“I’m here.”
“Yes,” Derek
says, his voice thick and heavy and laced with more years than he’s earned.
“Yes, you are. You want to roll with us, little man?”
Nick sets his
jaw. “Fuck yeah.”
Derek tilts his
head over a shoulder. “Hear that, Smack? He’s hungry already. Give him a
treat.”
The fourth face
staggers into the space between Nick and the others. It belongs to a thin kid,
a freshman. Nick has seen him around before. The only light comes from B-rad’s
Zippo held aloft and sliver-blue starlight filtered through the black branches
above.
Nick swallows.
The skinny kid’s
face is pale and moony and lost. His arms look about as big as the twigs Nick
crunched on the way into the woods. The funny thing though, the kid doesn’t
flinch or shake or anything.
“You want in,
Nicky, you give this bit of fresh meat here a good stomp down. You give him a
good stomp down, and you’re one of us.” Derek crosses his arms. The shadows
play with a scar on his face, splitting his mouth in two.
Nick’s hands
ball together in a pair of fists. He doesn’t really want this, to beat this
scrawny kid bloody, but he doesn’t want to be nobody, either. He wants to slash
tires, drink whiskey, and kick ass with Derek and Smack and B-rad. Respect
waits. He teeters on the balls of his feet. A memory of himself as a freshman
tumbles through his brain like a bit of trash blown by the wind. He doesn’t
think about the first punch.
The scrawny kid
crumbles, clutching his stomach.
Power. Nick
feels it, now. Blood thrums through his head. Smack and B-rad are cheering. Derek
laughs like a machine gun. Nick brings his knee into the kid’s face. The kid’s
neck jerks back, shiny black blood glistening under his nose.
“Fuck yeah,
Nicky.”
“Kick his ass.”
Nick trips the
kid, sending him over backwards. The thin body hits the ground and “oof” pops from
his mouth. He’s down, and Nick pulls back his foot and kicks, hard. He kicks
again, and again, each contact followed by the same, tiny “oof.” Panting, Nick
steps back after five or six good kicks—he’s lost count—and brushes sweat from
his forehead.
The scrawny kid,
the freshman, whoever, doesn’t even whimper. No, he pulls himself to his feet
while Nick takes a breather.
“You fucker,”
Nick says. The kid’s blank eyes find Nick’s. They’re blank and black and tranquil
almost, like a quiet night in the woods out beyond the stadium. Nick growls and swings a fist—he can feel it
now, all the rage and old hate and venom. His eyes glaze over with red. He can
feel the power of his memories, the hate for his dirty bastard of an uncle, the
sons-of-bitches in uniform on the other side of the lot, and his mother for
letting his father walk out four years ago. He puts all that swill in one
punishing cross. The crack is audible. Nick feels it in his arm. The scrawny
kid reels and spits teeth and blood.
“That’s good,”
Derek says.
No, it’s not. Nick punches the kid again, this time
in the side. He falls. Nick kicks him one final time, one time too many as a
sickening, wet crack signals a broken rib. Nick leans on his knees, huffing and
puffing, while the boy on the ground curls into a ball.
“I said that’s
good.” Derek frowns slightly.
Nick flexes his
sore fingers. He wipes sweat again, this time pulling his shirt to his face.
When he’s done, he studies the others.
“So?”
Derek’s cheek
flinches. “So?”
“Am I… In?”
There’s a noise
on the ground. The others watch as the scrawny kid pulls himself up one more
time. As before, there is no sound, no groan, no moan of pain. Not even a dry
sob. The scrawny kid stoops and picks his bloody teeth—two of them—from the
ground. He pops them in his mouth and swishes them around.
Nick’s guts go
cold. There’s a snake in his stomach made of ice.
“What the fuck…”
The scrawny
kid—but it’s not really a kid, Nick
knows that now—smiles. All the teeth are there in neat rows. All of them.
“My turn,” it
says.
Nick looks at
Derek, but Derek is looking at the thing. He nods and takes a step back. The
snake in Nick’s stomach coils and uncoils. He feels his bowels go loose. Somewhere behind him, B-rad flicks his Zippo,
click, click, click.
In the distance,
across the lot, a cheer rises in the big stadium, but the trees and shadows
have swallowed everything.
