Yellow Monkey Bars & Unbidden Erections -a failed campaign- a novel

“Now inhale,” Hale demands of Tim. Hale’s palm still occluding breath from both of Tim’s northern air bartering orifices. Patrick still has his arm down like a road obstruction at a tollbooth, telling Von Behren that this fight is solely between Tim and Hale and that cooperation on either side of the fence will yield bitter results from both parties, even if they are just trying to break it up.

 

            Hale demands that Tim inhale again. His face is the color of a pinched blueberry. Veins are beginning to sprout like birches across the tapestry of his forehead. Hale warns him once again to inhale, adding that if he doesn’t breathe in now there is a strong possibility that he might never have a valid opportunity breathe again at all, as in ever. Von Behren looks at Patrick as if we need to get him off of Tim. Patrick looks back at VonBehren and tells him that Tim was the one who started all of this shit; let him dig his own way out.

 

            “What?” Hale inquires. “Can’t use your superpowers now, can you? Can’t use your superpowers now to help yourself? Can’t help yourself when you’ve perpetually punished us for no apparent reason other than to make your own picayune pecker appear larger than it actually is by destroying all of our personal endeavors. Don’t feel so potent right now at this particular moment now, do you?”

 

Tim’s eyes scream out of his skull. Patrick can see little red veins shooting out of the whites from Tim’s eyes. It looks as if his whole entire skull is about to blow up. Patrick imagines little particles of cauliflower brain squirting out from his ears like dual vertical atom bombs sprouting from Tim’s side in brainy puffs.  Hale seems to be pressing down harder into Tim’s lips, still demanding that Tim inhale.

 

            Before Hale can inquire Tim’s body rattles in an almost orgasmic fashion, the blue in his face blushing into a resplendent Lenten purple, correlating with the color of the rest of the furniture in his room. Hale lets go and Tim remains purple flushed and palsied limbed, toppling into the floor like a damp tablecloth. Hale pushes himself up off of Tim and the broken desk and pads his plump sausage link fingers searching for his stogie.

 

            “Dude, Dave, you don’t think.” Patrick says, his lips looking at Tim’s body like something that has just passed on.

 

            “Shit,” Adds Von Behren, running up to Tim. Hale is relighting his cigar with one of Tim’s purple chrome lighters. After igniting the dark wrapped tobacco, Hale bends over and picks up several of Tim’s prized possessions. He picks up Death Shadow. He picks up Nightmare and Cerebrus. He picks up all of these and, with fingers finessed of a florist’s grace, delicately spins them into a long carefully spooled wand, holding it up to the light like a bravura operatic stem before feeding the top of the sheets into the lit end of the cigar.

 

            “There,” Hale says. “Everything that Tim has stood for and believed in is now officially dead.”

           

The smoke of the wand moves from the top end to the bottom quickly. It reminds VonBehren of a fourth of July sparkler void of the industrial blitzes. Patrick is beginning to look at the basement window, wondering if it is possible for the boys to sort of sneak out of here before Tim’s body is discovered. He wonders if Hale will get life for this, or if Hale will somehow, thanks to being on such good terms with Mrs. Looney and the incessant coffee refills bit, happened to get Cocker Johnson for his attorney, which he will plead that Hale acted in one hundred percent self defense, which, of course, VonBehren and Pat will agree, it was Tim who initially stomped on the phone, foamed at the mouth and lunged at Hale, a residential look of evil stashed between the whites of his eyes.

 

            “Hale, dude, shit.” Patrick adds. Still looking at Tim’s face, which is gradually loosing the purple color and reverting into its pallid saltine whiteness.

 

             “I was acting out of self-defense,” Hale says, as the rolled flagpole of Tim’s beloved characters slowly disintegrates into char. “You know I never intended to hurt anyone.” Both Patrick and VonBehren have to nod. It’s true. Hale would never purposefully hurt a mosquito, even if it were propped on his cock during a nocturnal camping trip. He sees every living creature as an equal.

 

            From upstairs Tim’s mother is calling down to him, asking if everything is all right down there. Patrick looks at VonBehren, his eyelids suggestive of a possible solution and, without consulting his permission first; VonBehren pops his knuckles and pummels Patrick hard in the nads, his voice, screeching into a verifiable high-pitched Branagan falsetto, forcing Patrick to inform Mrs. Branagan that yes, everything is fine indeed, I was just beating the ever living shit out of my friends characters.

 

            “Dave,” Pat looks at both of his friends named Dave. “We have got to jet. There’s no telling how much shit we could get into for all this.”

 

            VonBehren holds his hand against Tim’s neck, feeling for the slightest insight of a pulse. Patrick thinks that perhaps the boys could call in an exorcist. They could lie and say Tim was trying to show Hale his latest wrestling maneuver and Hale accidentally slipped, running into the desk, rendering himself unconscious.

 

VonBehren continues to slide his hand up and down Tim’s neck, cursing, ordering Branagan to open his eyes. Hale takes generous puffs, picks up Holly’s panties and sniffs, holds them out like a white flag to Patrick, asking him if perhaps he would like a sniff at them as well.

 

            “I think I hear a pulse,” VonBehren says. Sweat breaking from both Patrick’s and V.B.’s forehead.

 

            “Do you think he’s just unconscious?” Inquires Patrick.

 

            “No,” adds Hale, sniffing and puffing casually. “I think he’s just an asshole.  I sometimes can’t understand your loyalty to him since he treats you guys like shit as well.”

 

            Patrick looks at Hale as if to say, you have a point. Von Behren pumps Tim’s chest several times up and down, staring at Tim like he is trying in vain to jumpstart a lawn mower.

 

            “Coma?” Patrick comments, casually.

 

            “I don’t know.” Adds VonBehren. “His heart rate seems fine.” VonBehren kneels down and presses his ear into Tim’s chest. Two months ago, he thought he was helping Meredith-Elise’s grandmother Hazel when she slipped and played dead and ended up seducing him while her grand-daughter came home early from Junior Shakespeare. VonBehren hasn’t told any of his comrades the real reason why Meredith-Elise is walking around the hallways, sucking on a black pacifier, wearing a choker with a black broken claddagh in the center of it, holding a voodoo-doll that looks like VonBehren with multiple spikes protruding out of his pelvis section. VonBehren feels the way right now the same he felt when he was trying to resuscitate Meredith’s grandmother, like Tim is faking it for his own means to an end.

 

            There are footsteps upstairs. He can hear Tim’s brother, Matt scream like a four year old at his sister Tracy for turning the channel and not allowing him to watch Thunder Cats. Patrick realizes that the boys should no longer stay here. Looking east, he sees that if they dismantle the window the boys will be able to make their escape avoid Bear and Mrs. Branagan’s inquiry.

 

            “Hale, come here, help me with this window.” Patrick points. Hale shrugs, stashes his souvenir panties in his side pocket and lumbers over to the window, extending his limbs up to the grilled rectangle, trying to remove it.

 

            “Hurry up,” Adds Patrick, his nuts still owing retribution to VonBehren. “The sooner our assess scram, the safer.”

 

            “I’m trying,” Hale adds, before telling Patrick not to have a cow, his body is still sore from Holly Turner. VonBehren drags Flanagan away from the crumpled desk, laying him near the wall next to Hale’s legs.

 

            “Hale, hurry,” Patrick adds, as Tim’s mother yells at him that it’s time for supper upstairs. Hale looks back at Patrick yells at him to, for the love of god, show a little bit of patience, people. Geez! Next to his boot none of the boys see that Tim Branagan’s eyes are open and that he is lifting up the bottom hem of Hale’s pants, licking his lips around his mouth like a vampire about ready to succulently feast on his prey.