A boy whose age I’m not sure of was moving unseen in the street among wretched buildings. Drain pipes spewed out water and gas pipes ran affixed to the walls and steam rose out of vents. It was too poor to look cyberpunk but the neon lights said it was getting there. The feet of the boy were covered in torn shoes and the torso in a blue raincoat with the hood pulled over the head. It was daytime, but everything seemed dark and blue because of the storm, though not much sun would penetrate those doomed parts any other time. The boy was depressed. In the hand he clutched a crumpled A4 notebook and a backpack hugged him from behind and told him it was all right. He watched the cracks in the asphalt as he descended, the way the rain moved and wet everything. He seemed to revel in that weather, though some people’s houses flooded and some had no houses so they flooded.
When he reached the nadir of the slope there was another bit of asphalt running crosswise and a sidewalk, and behind the sidewalk a row of buildings that came with two floors. It was so cramped in there, like you could hardly breathe, like there was no point in breathing. The kid headed for the one directly facing the slope… “Stonethrow’s Wood & Metal Workshop,” read the words and symbol carved into a wooden plate, a banner of sorts. It was made of red wood and had sides like waves in a storm.
He entered the door, chimes clinking in return. “Ah, welco—” started the smiley voice of a huge man while turning around, tossing a rag over his shoulder and dusting off his hands. He was bald and had a great white perky moustache.
But his smile vanished the moment the eyes struck the kid. “Oh, it’s you, Rodd…”
“Hi, dad.”
“Yeah, yeah. Get to work, will ya?” he waved and turned back to his own work, cutting some metal and rummaging through parts in those colorful plastic containers by the partition wall.
Rodd took his raincoat off and hung it on a hook. (His hair was ashen and buzzcut.) Now he was in a plain white wife-beater like his father. He was quite tall and muscular already. He walked over to the workbench by the wall opposite the door, and there he found two angle grinders, one blue, the other pink. They looked old and the colors were sucked of brightness.
“You know, I just got us the best angle grinders 5 bucks can buy,” began the father, now at the workbench below the window. “They’re hand-me-downs but they’re as good as new!” He groaned. “Turns out Larry has got it into his head that, ‘I have too much garbage!’ Garbage, he said! Heh, but that’s old Larry for ya… All age, no brains… Come to think of it, these bad boys are a lot like Larry! They’re 10000, and they don’t got a kill switch, so even if they saw your arm off, they keep runnin’ till you find the god damn power button with your other arm. Hehehe.”
He went quiet for a while. The atmosphere had suddenly shifted. He boinked his eyes nervously at Rodd and back. “Oh, that’s right! You got your grades back! So, did you carry the class?” No answer… “Hah, that’s a joke. You know you have your father’s genes. Heheheh, eh.”
But Rodd wouldn’t say anything. A silence fell on the shop like a press.
“Don’t tell me…” he half-whispered, “y-you flunked?” He sounded weak. He weighed against the workbench, blinking fast and panting, almost wheezing.
“I—I’m sorry. I—”
“I don’t wanna hear sorry! Those loan sharks … I owe them 50 grand!” He was murmuring something under his breath. “With my education, I could never raise that!” He kept panting and Rodd kept being quiet. “They’re gonna kill me!” He gasped as if something had come to him.” No … you are gonna kill me!”
“What?”
“Yes! You!” He pointed aggressively at Rodd with a shaky finger. “You are gonna kill me! You’re gonna kill your father!”
“I told you! The words … m-melt when I try to read them! I—”
“I don’t wanna hear those excuses! You’re lazy,” he nodded, “m-hm, that’s your problem!” he said, while pointing at Rodd and tapping the air. “You don’t spend any time with your nose in the books!”
“I can’t, because you keep me down here!”
“More excuses! That’s all you’re good for!”
“It’s your fault,” he mumbled.
“Wh—what did you say?”
There was a long pause. “You’re a loser, dad.”
Rodd turned to his work. He had said that very nonchalantly. The father stood there grimly for a while. You’re a loser, dad. It was too much. His hands squeezed into a pair of fists, and he began stomping toward Rodd…
Rodd noticed. “Dad, what are you doing?” He had advanced on Rodd. “Dad?” He was close. “Dad!” He covered an astonishing distance with each step, so that before Rodd knew it, he had been grabbed and shoved against the workbench. Then he was being choked to death by a bear claw… He really saw a bear in front of him: He had just read a parable of a bear who … gave a helping paw to a beaver, so that his dam would be reinforced… Or was the bear destroying the dam and killing the beaver? He couldn’t quite make out the words…
But even if the bear was aggressive, it wasn’t because he chose to be… He was just … hungry.
The two angle grinders lay by each side of Rodd, plugged in but not running. The father reached for the one on the right, the pink one, secured it and pushed the power button. The machine went whirr, and the father began grunting and foaming at the mouth while brandishing it. Meanwhile Rodd cried out and cried out for dad, but it was perfectly useless. Without even touching the side handle, the father brought the noisy thing down and shoved it into Rodd’s left eyebrow. Then he pressed it deeper and deeper till it was maybe a quarter inch deep, and then slowly guided the blades upward and crosswise through the forehead and then the scalp, taking off a strip of hair along with the flesh. Rodd was thrashing and screeching, but again that meant precious little: the bear was roaring. “You will learn to respect your father!” The savage then repeated the whole process from the other side with the other tool, now suffocating with the right hand and cutting with the left. When he was finished, Rodd was … marked with a fresh wound of a bloody X.
The father lumbered over to the bench below the window. Rodd, strung out on the bench and wheezing, tipped his head and clocked the blue grinder. Then, he tipped his head the other way and clocked the pink one. He was dripping with blood and so were the blades of the grinder discs. The discs were punched in with 4 holes that looked like commas. The tools were plugged into an extension cord spool on the floor. He got to his feet and cranked them on. Then he turned around.
“Back to work? That’s right,” said the father, not looking up.
Rodd was not back to work. Armed with a grinder in each hand, he let them fall and caught their cords. Now they hung in the air like pears. But even if the bear was aggressive, it wasn’t because he chose to be… He was just … hungry. By latching onto the power cords and turning his hips and hands, Rodd could spin the grinders around in a circular motion. He thrust the pink forth, then the blue, then the pink, then the blue… This way, they never got in the way of the other. He gradually picked up the pace till he mastered the flow. And then, he began stomping his way toward the father…
“I don’t think Larry will take those back…” The father spotted Rodd’s reflection in the window. “Son! Son! What are you—”
Rodd catapulted the blue one across the room, and it sliced the dad crosswise the face. He succumbed to the floor with a scream. By the time he got to his senses, Rodd was looming over him like a tree. He was spinning round the grinders again like nunchaku sticks. “Son!” He sent the pink one down and it cut across the face the other way, and the X was now complete. The father screamed again and begged for mercy. There was none. The dual-wielding lunatic plummeted Larry’s hand-me-downs into the man over and over again. When the man, getting up in age, tried to protect himself, he was cut in more places… He tried kicking but he was cut in the legs. He tried getting to his feet by holding onto the workbench but he was cut in the back. He once managed to bang on the window and yell, “Help!” but none came. He was being cut down.
The man had emerged. A woman trekked by on the sidewalk before him. It was still a heavy downpour out. In one hand the man held two grinders, each by its cord—it was like a grinder bouquet—and in the other the spool by its handle. He got to walking up the same street he had walked down about 10 minutes ago. He passed a drenched A4 notebook over the gutter grates. His wife-beater was blood-soaked and he wore a backpack.
“Ah, fuck off your creeps! Help!” came a yell from up ahead. There was a woman bunched up against a building, walled in by a pair of thugs. They were at a turn in the road.
“Now, now, sweetie,” said the older thug, “we’ll be going soon enough… Shut up for a sec, will ya? Hehehe.” He licked the side of her throat bottom to top. Meanwhile the other was rummaging through her purse. She kept struggling and grunting. “Help!”
A baker covered in flour stood on his welcome mat under an awning. “They’re always doing this,” he cried, and shook his head buried in the palm of his hands. He kept murmuring hopelessly.
Roddney looked at his spool. “Can I use one of your electrical outlets?”
“Hm?” He looked up and his hands left and imprint of flour on his face.
Roddney walked in, found an outlet and stuck in the plug for the spool. Then he unwound the reel of cable around the spool. He fixed the grinders and the spool in the same position as before and walked out. The cable-snake slithered out with him, a part of it anyway. There were no sidewalks. He walked into the street and headed up toward the trio.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
The woman clocked him in the slit between the thugs and went, “Eh?” and the thugs went, “Huuh?” and spun. Rodd stopped. He eyed them all up. The woman was a pretty businesswoman in her thirties. She had brown hair and wore it in a single line of braids while leaving some to hang around the edges of her forehead. Of the thugs, one was older and balding and ugly. He had teeth that looked like rectangular mints and were disorganized, and one of his eyes was squinting. The other was young and dirty and bruised in the face. He had brownish bangs and a fade, sideburns and snuggled teeth. He wore a zipless sweater that made him look fairly cute. There was a chibi bear in the middle of it, too. The soles of his shoes were coming apart and his feet were drenched.
“Heeeeh? And what do we have here?” the older one asked.
“A handyman!” They cackled.
“Hey, asshole! Can you fix my whisker chair? My whale of an aunt sat on it and now it’s all broken!” They cackled again. “Maybe if you do,” he continued, “we let you live.” He smirked an evil smirk with his stupid teeth. Meanwhile they released the woman and she ran up and disappeared.
“Check it out,” said the older one, “those grinders must be worth a ton of cash. Hehehe.”
Roddney set the spool down and wound the grinder cords off his hand. Then he shoved the grinder plugs into each slot in the spool. It was no longer raining but it was still dark as a mother. The blood had run on his wife-beater.
“What is he doing?”
“I don’t know.”
Rodd began to spin the trusty machines the same as before. He wound those fucking things up till you couldn’t even make out what they were. “Ooh,” went the baker, standing on his welcome mat again. And Rodd was on the move again…
“Yoooo,” panicked the younger one, “this guy’s trouble!” He really was. And he really was gonna to kill them, too. “Yo, we need a plan! Run? How about run?”
“We don’t run!” The seasoned thug gave the brain the old grease while the killer was afoot. It was going to happen again… Blood was to flood the street and flow down the sewage where it would swim along desperate dreams. They were just kids.
“Kugo!”
“Shut up! I can’t hear myself think.”
“You won’t hear yourself at all once he cuts your head off!”
He scratched his disgusting musty chin for a while. “Hmm…” He smirked. “I have an idea…”
“Eh?”
“But you’re not gonna like it…”
He really didn’t. The idea had been to split. The disciple now faced Rodd head on in the street, while his sensei crept along the buildings on the side.
The disciple shakily held a knife in his hands as the gap between him and Rodd was closing. W-why do I have to be the bait? He was nearly crying. Suddenly, Rodd stopped and set his eyes on the sensei. The sensei felt the presence. They locked eyes but it was like limp pasta against obsidian. Looking at Rodd in the eyes was like looking into the boreholes of a shotgun. “Come on kid, what’s the idea?” He was a stretch ahead of his protégé, and looked over his shoulder to see him. He was shitting himself as before. Tch. Stupid brat’s too chicken to attack. Well, doesn’t matter. All I gotta do is grab the power cord and yank it out of its socket. Hm… I could flank the kid and pull at the cord behind him, but that leaves me too exposed. He imagined Rodd sending a grinder behind his back and cutting him in the eye as he turned. My safest bet is to make a dash for the bakery and find where the plug is. He looked down at the asphalt. This incline should give me enough momentum to narrowly escape one of those grinders slicing me up. Unless the kid figures to take a shot at me with both his grinders at the same time, in which case he’d double his chances of landing a hit. He looked at the disciple and smirked. But that would leave him totally exposed against the brat, and that’d be a one-way ticket to getting stabbed in the chest. He imagined the disciple bum rushing Rodd and stabbing him in the chest while he was distracted. Then he looked at the baker. Now, as far as the old man is concerned, it’s not like he can close the door, after all the power cord’s in the way. But, if he keeps the door open, I will charge the store and force my way in. If that happens, I’m unplugging the plug first, then I will kill him for siding with the kid. He imagined forcing the door open, unplugging the plug, pulling out two knives and prowling the crying baker pushing his legs against the floor away from him. Hehehe. So, what is it gonna be, gentlemen?
He glanced ahead at Rodd and began to charge the store. “Roll up the awning! Now!” yelled Rodd. The baker panted and quickly shoved one hand inside, where he tapped around until he found where the crank was attached to the doorframe. He began turning it with all his might. The sensei was springing down the street and the awning was disappearing. Roddney watched on while keeping half an eye on the disciple, not letting up the grinder work. His stance was divided between the sensei and the disciple. He was sweating and seemed nervous but determined.
“Come on!” cried the baker, getting to be out of breath from all the cranking. The sensei was all he saw and he was getting bigger. He wondered if Rodd had betrayed him… The sensei was practically at the door when he finally drew up the awning. Now Rodd seemed to have come to his senses and with a grunt he sent out a grinder with precision. The airborne grinder busted a series of telephone wires hitched over roadside. They sizzled as they each were cut, and soon all were rapidly swooping down. The sensei just had to be in the way…
“Kugo!”
For a brief moment the sensei’s psycho leering face lined up with the baker’s terrified sweaty face, but before anything was done, the triad of rogue wires struck the sensei in the back and cooked him alive. He choked up and fell over the welcome mat.
“Kugo.”
The disciple raised the knife higher and began gnashing his teeth and foaming at the mouth. Roddney held up the two grinders in the shape of an X. The disciple hesitated a while then turned and high-tailed it. Roddney chucked one grinder away and stepped up ahead. He set the grinder down and then fed a length of cord between his fingers and began spinning around. The grinder went with him. He wound himself and the grinder up so fast they were just like a mass of tornado. Then he released the grinder and it spun in the air with the cord, and since the disciple was smart enough to run in a perfect straight line, he was going to eat it. The grinder ended up getting him in the forehead with the safe end. He fell face first onto the asphalt.
When the disciple came to, he was struggling like Houdini, wrapped around nicely in cord. When Roddney loomed over his eyes, he panted. “Please! I was brought up by the wrong people!”
Silence for a while.
“Do they melt for you too?”
“W-what?”
“The words … do they melt when you try to read them?”
“N-no.”
Roddney walked over to his backpack and produced a book of poems and fairy tales. Then he crouched down by the disciple again and cracked it open somewhere in the middle. “Can you read this?”
The disciple boinked his eyes incredulously between the page and Roddney’s face for a while, then said, “I can read it, but it won’t be so pretty,” and sort of smirked, still wound up in cord like a tuna and looking up at Roddney.
“That’s okay.”
The disciple was taken aback. He was gathering to give his best effort…
T-t-there was once a b-b-beaver with red spots who w-w-would build dams with r-r-red wood…
Roddney leaned in and his gaze was not so cold anymore. All the other b-b-beavers, who had no spots, would b-b-build their dams with w-w-white wood… Roddney’s eyes widened and he looked attentively at the page, even though he couldn’t read it from that angle … or from any angle.
The disciple was putting on voices now and, pouring all his emotions into it, he kept reading and reading:
I like the red one better…
Then have it your way, idiot! …
One day, a bear swam down the river…
I’m going to break your dam and eat you! …
HE ATTACKED THE DAM WITH HIS BIG CLAWS AND FIERY JAW! …
And the dam was gone …
The spotty beaver felt u-un … un-bearably lonely just then, and he cried …
“That’s enough!” Roddney snapped the book close and scared the shit out of the disciple. He took the book and put it back in the backpack. Then he grabbed the disciple, who began thrashing and pleading. “Wait! Wait! I read the damn thing!” But all Roddney did was stand him upright.
“This might make you a little dizzy.”
He tugged on the cord and sent the disciple spinning till he got unwound completely. The two men-boys eyed up each other for a while… The dizzy one looked at the corpse of his teacher, electric wires still sizzling on and about. He kept looking and looked sad… Suddenly, the sound of tires hitting the asphalt could be heard in the distance, along with the engine roaring. It came from the road up ahead, and sure enough, a soot-black limo made the turn at the bend and tumbled down, gaining quick on the two rejects. Police sirens went wee-woo with the lights wheezing over the car. The criminal gave his newest fellow a conflicted glance, then took off into an alleyway.
Soon, the limo pulled up a stretch above Rodd sort of crosswise, and a thirty-something man got out the back. He wore a suit and black sunglasses, yellow hair gelled back.
“Salutations! Detective Pudding, civil servant with the A.D.M., yadi yada.” He held up his badge, waved around his other hand dismissively and put the badge away. Between the bold white A.D.M. logo at the top and his name at the bottom, the badge read, “Recruitment Unit.”
He then looked around the battered street, took off his glasses and revealed a set of beautiful yellow eyes. A pretty, handsome man. “Quite a scene, huh?” he chided, donning a grin. Rodd said nothing. “You did this?” he accused, raising his brows and pointing at Rodd, who again said nothing. “You did this…” He clipped his sunglasses over his tie and sort of bobbed around, gave out a chuckle and put his hands on his hips. “It’s always trouble with you, isn’t it?” He paused. “First, you kill your old man—tch-tch-tch—then you kill this guy … and cause property damage. And if all that wasn’t enough … you abjured your civil duty to restrain a fleeing delinquent … even though he traumatized this poor woman!” He pointed at someone in the car. It was indeed the same businesswoman the delinquents had been messing with, clutching her purse and making noises. Rodd sprung his head to see her, and she ducked down, making more noises.
“What … do you have to say for yourself?”
Roddney was silent for a while, thinking… “I guess I was … I was just hungry.”
Everybody alive gasped. The baker, who still stood on his god-forsaken welcome mat, turned around and looked at his repertoire of baked goods. Then he turned back around and scratched his head.
“Oh! Right! He was hungry! Heh!” he nudged that poor woman in the shoulder, who winced in return. “That explains it!” He hugged his hands and held them against his heart. Then, he cutely tipped his head. “Thank you! Thank you for being honest! This has been a great therapy session for all of us. Hah? How about it, baker? Have you learned something?” He sounded angry. Before the baker could tell him what he’d learned, a boy, who was about the same age as Rodd but smaller, rose out of the car. He wore green-and-red clothing of polyester, pointy shoes, baggy pants, a belt, button-up cardigan, a young, innocent face, and a hat with golden balls on top that went cling-clang. Also, he had six hands, with a white glove on each. With a cute, friendly voice, he said, “I guess not hungry enough to eat the guy who got away! Hehuh.”
“Hm?” went Pudding.
“Because that guy wasn’t food … he was a friend … someone he could relate to,” the kid said, looking straight at Rodd.
“Oh, that’s right, Clown … why don’t you make our new recruit laugh.” Pudding had softened up suddenly, placing his elbow on the open door and smiling. But he still spoke deviously.
“Recruit?” whispered Rodd.
“All right!” said Clown. He waltzed up to Rodd, slipped his right hand into his left armpit and started roving up and down, mimicking fart noises. But Rodd didn’t laugh. Actually he looked even sadder. Clown saw this and stopped. “Hey, here’s a joke!” He held up his fists excitedly. “What do you call a useless parasite who lives on public funds?” He paused. Everyone seemed pumped for the punchline, save for Rodd. “The king!” Clown began cackling loudly. Pudding chuckled. The businesswoman did too, hiding her giddiness with her hand. The baker smiled and laughed with half his mouth. But Rodd broke out in painful cries. Everyone gasped. The woman even got out of the car. They all looked concerned.
The workshop. The legs of the father. The sensei laid out dead. The baker. Pudding. The businesswoman. Turned out the disciple was hiding out in an alleyway just down from Rodd. He was clutching his knife and had apparently heard everything. He slid the knife into his pants and walked away, kicking a rock and shoving his hands into his sweater pouch. The sky was now rainless above them, and even some light shone through.