The rescue

 

Although Von Behren is seated on the handle bars of the thruster, Patrick has his arms buckled around his torso like a life vest as if trying to hold on to something as the Thruster involuntarily continues to screech across the blue pasture of the almost windex colored late-spring afternoon sky, the two boys continue to carol out a chorus of yelps and wails as the vessel gyrates and spins forming what feels like consecutive 360 ‘s headed in a downward spiral towards the stain glass afro of Ghetto Jesus. Patrick hears Von Behren almost illegibly drawl something out about this perhaps being the end before Patrick feels the palms of Von Behren’s hands slice back over his own vision just as the astral vehicle darts into the heavy black left pupil of Ghetto Jesus spewing glass like crystallized confetti in every which way direction but, and the next thing both of the lads realize is that the Thruster appears to be headed a la direct course in the direction of the Guillotine located in the center of the gymnasium. The blackness of Von Behren’s palm slowly pans out into peach riddled geometric lines of latitude and longitude before Patrick’s vision enters the den of his previously wrought destruction. The entire scene almost calculated before his eyes in a tear-drop of a second. His youngest brother Allan, the hostage, still comfortably clad in his Native American Boston Tea Party incognito feathers and war paint bounded and trussed, head lodged into Coach M’s Guillotine most commonly reserved for in the art of severing the heads of rival mascots. For some reason Coach M has the A-team theme song is blaring through the schools magnified sub-woofers, cosigning Patrick and Von Behren’s rescue with an almost patriotic sense of pre-ordained urgency. Patrick can feel flecks of glass sprinkling behind his ears and his head and the moment he sees that Warren’s Thruster, the timely brakeless vehicle served as a rescue chariot in the operation of war, is on course to batter his brother straight in his locked forehead, Patrick grapples the handle of the Thruster as hard as he fucking can and using some sort of almost Herculean strength on loan from some higher authority, his teeth grinding steadily behind his lips as he marshals the handlebars hard, to the left just as the tires to the skid into the lucre shine of the finance for eternity floor, leaving serious skid marks that look like dirty rainbows three feet above the three-point arch, marks that coach M will later say were placed intently to give Marcellus Buck an idea where the NBA three point parabolic curve is located. Patrick then swerves the bike, revs the gas aiming into the direction of his nemesis Coach, still ready to decapitate Allan in the center of the gymnasium. 

 

            “Fuck,” Patrick screams out as he wields his tomahawk out in his free hand, his left hand harnessing the vehicle as if in rodeo posture jousting towards the wooded podium where Coach M still stands, his lips petrified in a frame of shock. As Patrick accelerates the vehicle towards the podium he swings the tomahawk around in what appears to be an overhead figure-eight and, with his lips tucked into his skull, thwacks the bladed instrument into the direction of Coach M, which, judging by the Coaches response, it appears that Patrick may have seriously nicked some part of his right hand.

 

            Before Patrick can tell Von Behren that he plans on circling around the contours of the Finance for Eternity Gymnasium a couple of times to gain the accelerated momentum the Thruster needs to launch, Von Behren has already jump kicked off the handlebars and is sprinting towards a bent over Coach M. Several of the Varsity Elite seem to be chasing after Patrick with their arms outstretched as if they are caricatures in an animated strip as Patrick cuts and seamlessly carves an additional NBA three-point parabolic curve before telling Aron and Mario to eat his dust as he screeches, swerves, cuts off the foaming crowd, back pedals, forming what he will someday learn is the mathematical emblem for infinity across the sheen gloss of the gym floor headed skewered and rackety, trying to gain momentum, watching as Von Behren kicks an already crouched waist Coach M in the chin by falling back in slow motion and then punting up his own ersatz Nike Dedalus Puma pro-wing into the coaches chin in a fashion in which it looks like Von Behren is punting the football after third and long. As Patrick breezes past the side of the gymnasium where the folded lunch tables hibernate into the wall Patrick can’t help humming out the blaring A-team theme song to himself as an anthem of pending victory as he realigns his weight, digging his shoulder deeply into resplendent soil of the refurbished court, looping back like a corporeal boomerang near the bleachers where he can see Marceullus Buck picking up something that resembles one of his emaciated bitches and hurling it javelin like in the direction of Patrick, to no avail.  On the top of the podium Von Behren has successfully unraveled the leather cuffs behind Allan’s wrist after carefully yanking his head from the swallowing wooden orifice of the guillotine. Patrick is in the middle of accelerating speed on his second loop and a steady crowd of basketball elite has begun chasing him again, Donald Lionowski, leading up the pack, slowly jogging his limbs in the circular-eight formation already breaking a sweat. Von Behren looks at Patrick as if to say, next loop and we’re off brother. Without hesitating Allan  immediately creepers Coach M and then pushes him off the lip of the podium just as his older brother zips past him for his final lap—the Coach, oscillating his arms in a wild akimbo of fury as he trampled into the sprinting Dedalus soles of the Varsity Elite still charging after Patrick. As Patrick veers into right he can feel the bodies of both his brother and his best friend mount the Thruter, in a wobble, Coach M standing splayed limb in front of the Thrusteras if playing chincese tag, Von Behren lowering his right hand and scooping up what appears to be a stuffed animal of orinthological merit in his right hand, Patrick mandating that they tuck their heads into their shirts as if in prayer, as if supplicating for something greater in the scope of this world as he can feel the Thruster lift plowing through the antipodal eye of ghetto Jesus in the atmosphere, glass sprinkling like wished for rain in a time of need.