Just In-HALE (b.)...

 

 

 

 

 

“AHH!! Shit!!! For the love of God people! Fuck!!!”

           

            Tim is munching into the side of Hale’s left leg. More foam seems to be accumulating form around the edges of his lips. Patrick and VonB both immediately run over to Tim and peel him off of Hale. Tim has part of Hale’s blood dripping off of his teeth.

 

            “Damnit Tim!!!” Hale yells. Drops the grille, pulls back his steel toe boot like he is about ready to kcik a field goal.”

 

            “Stop!!!” Orders VonBehren, using all of his mass to shove Hale in the corner, knocking down Tim’s Toys and the little signs he has pasted in front of them.

 

            “We’ve done enough for the day. We’ve done enough.” VonBehren quickly shoves Hale into Matt’s portion of the basement clad with crocheted stitches of Tigers on every wall. As VonBehren quickly looks back before slamming the door he can see Patrick spooning his whole entire body around a foam-cheeked red-eyed lunging Tim. Tim is screaming at an even higher pitch then Matt upstairs. His scream seems to perpetuate other dogs in the neighborhood to keen and howl as well. VonBehren thinks that Tim, with Patrick’s limbs buckled around his upper torso resembles an asylum patient trying to free himself from a straight jacket. VonBehren slams the door just as Tim looses himself of Patrick’s tenacious grip by biting his wrist, swatting the door in Flanagan’s face.

 

            “Hale,” This has gone off long enough. We got to get outta here. We just got to book.”   

 

            “That fucker bit me!” Hale says. Lifting up the cuff of his pant leg. More thuds are heard on the other side of the door. Tim is still screaming bloody murder, calling Hale a pussy; neurotically screaming at the top of his lungs. VonBehren still has his entire back stapled against the door.

 

            “Hale, come on. That fucker’s crazy.”  Another thud is heard. Mrs. Branagan’s voice is also screeching down the stairs asking what in Saint Johoesphat’s name is going on down there. Patrick is overheard trying to convince Tim merely just to chill. Just to chill out for the time being before more slashes and thrown raucous is heard on the antipodal side of the door. Tim is saying that he is going to single handedly pluck the little weed that Hale refers to as his pecker from out of his ass once he gets on the other side of the door for burning up his characters.

 

            “Hale,” VonBehren says. “You need to go. This is going to get ugly. Tim’s fucking nuts.”

 

            Hale swats down his stogie, casually rolls north the cuffs of his shirt, informing VonBehren to step away from the door, step away from the door, now. When VonBehren defies the orders Hale’s eyes reflect up in his head and he simply says the word please, for the love of god people, I’m a big boy, what you think this is under my belt—a finely tuned engine for a sex machine?”

 

            VonBehren complies. He slides one step toward Matt’s paint by number princess Tiger portrait, hearing the door splinter open, Tim, mad, foam still collecting in the corner of his lips, eyes what appear to be the size of fortune telling eight-ball protruding out of his head, a sword he purchased at a renaissance fair two years ago wielded high above his head. With his sleeves rolled up and his fists ready to pummel, Hale will tell you himself, addressing you as his dear friend, calling you honey, saying that honey, he may be dumb, but he sure as shit fire ain’t stupid. When he sees Tim storming towards him, the weapon brandished, a look of sick pride glued to his eyes, Hale decides that the most opportune tactic to employ now would be to in fact, haul some serious ass. Which he does, without looking back even once into the face of his adversary. Tim is yelling out high-ya in a high pinched nasal monotone that reminds Von Behren of Ms. Piggy.

 

            VonBehren swears that when Hale took off he saw little gusts of smoke emanating from his heels. More noise from the kitchen. Tim is screaming that he needs to perform an anal exorcise. From the sounds of things it sounds like Mrs. Branagan probably either feinted or decided to hurtle some of her pans at either Hale or her blood-grazed son. The front door swings open and close and then swings open and close again. Tim is still screaming, three octaves above his normal adolescent baritone.



 

 

 

 

 

 

VonBehren enters Tim’s room, looking around. Patrick is seen, smashed in the glassed case where Tim keeps his toys locked for showcase display only. Tim’s computer has been smashed. His poster that features a swim suit drawing of the female X-men in lewd positions under a titanium waterfall has also been ripped from the wall.  As he extends his hand and fastens his grip VonBehren can only surmise what Patrick saw his friend morph into—a demonic mammal outraged that the fat kid scored before he did.

 

            “Dude,” Says Patrick, brushing off GI Joes off of one of his shoulders.

 

The boys look around at the wrecked havoc. The cross that Tim made out of aluminum he wore around his neck after he self-baptized himself in the nuclear creek topples off of the shelf, the last remaining item to crumble, seeming both very ironic and very fitting at the same time.

 

“I’m sorry Patrick,” VonBehren says. “I should have stayed in here with you to try and get Tim to calm down. I’m really sorry.”

 

VonBehren can see several gashes and one long serpentine welt lashing down the inside of Patrick’s arm.

 

“Come on,” He says to Patrick, wrapping his arm around him like a bandaged war troop. “Let’s get you back to your house. There’s a bottle of Vodka in your crawl space we can nurse that wound with. Come on.”

 

Patrick remains silence. It is almost as if he has witness something that he should not have seen. Teddy Bear is still barking like mad upstairs and the kitchen is trashed. The table split upside down with little cut marks sliced into the edge.  Tim’s mother is bending over picking up pots and pans, yelling at the boys that she knew that DC game was just like Dungeons and Dragons; that it was a marketable product of Satan. She points her finger at Von Behren, saying that if it wasn’t for him bringing that creature Hale into her house in the first place she wouldn’t have lost her sweat, innocent Christ loving boy to the powers of Satan.

 

Patrick places a cigarette between his lips and fires it up before leaving the house. On the front porch, the same porch Tim exiled Hale off of a month before, Patrick and VonBehren see Tim, trotting heavy footed, his sword chipped in half, swearing. His face is green. It hurts VonBehren even just to look at Tim.

 

“All of your characters are dead. All of them. Every single one of them. You all lose!” Tim sneers, curses, walks away very heavily into the front door, slamming it closed and then locking it. Inside his chest, VonBehren heart feels like an anchor slowly descending into the plummeting depths of his morality. He feels that he should knock on the door right now and demand that Tim apologize for hurting Patrick. Pat brushes it off, tells VonBerhen to go ahead and get on his bike, he’ll follow him home.

 

In mid-to-late October the sun seems to sink. It doesn’t splatter the skyline with the amazing encores that it does in the summer. It hurts Patrick to pedal his carriage up and down and by the time Rohmann splits into Sterling and Sterling scatters into down Circle, Patrick and VonBehren see Hale, smoking another cigar, seated on the front steps of Casa McReynolds, not too far from the tree house Patrick built, which, one day, unsuspectingly, VonBehren decided to climb up to the very top of, just to see what he could possibly find inside.