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Member
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: NY
Posts: 3
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Short Story - Fireworks - 1st Draft - Critique like hell...
Fireworks
And Gorgeous kills a darkie! On East Main, the sparkling white Allero, the liter of Jack, all of it. The sky ablaze. I’ll call it honorable death number two; two o’clock-ish was the first. My father flattened my sister’s two day-old hamster, Charlie, under the rubber sole of his steel-toed boot. My sister, Sara, is eleven. Sara was deathly afraid of Charlie because he was so damned vicious; Charlie was a twisted little runt. Gorgeous - his sense of humor is so sexy - he called him “the twisted pygmy.”
Twisted. That was little Charlie.
Sara never played with that little Charlie. Well, not like she wanted to. Instead, Sara lowered these skinny pencils down inside his dank little cage; safer than fingers, right? She learned that lesson real quick. Mom would keep telling Sara, “Just wait, darling! His temper will adjust!” But, it never did. Instead, Charlie became her living, breathing, hissing pencil sharpener. And the fear kept mounting, and intensifying, and building up in her eleven year-old eyes like the fireworks just now, and she cried, and she cried, and she cried...
And then little Charlie, the twisted pygmy, felt the wrath of Dad’s steel-toe. He called it “an honorable death.” It happened like this: My little sister, she saw this colorful sign on one of the lockers at her summer camp. Made out of red construction paper and those glittering, neon markers. You know the ones? The ones that show up better on darker colored paper? Who would have thought? The sign said something like, “My hamster Sparkler just had babies! Two bucks a piece!” No one was buying. After one week, it was one-fifty.
Then one.
Then fifty cents.
Then, one free little Charlie.
This is when my little sister finally seized on the... opportunity? Was it an opportunity, or an impulse? After two days, Charlie was deader than a doornail.
My father. He’s very protective of his children. Naturally, when Sara started throwing shit-fits over that little Charlie, he declared that a refund was the best course of action. But this little bitch, this teency-weency fifth-grade entrepreneur - she wouldn’t hear of it! My dad was having this big argument with some fifth-grader he didn’t even know on her front porch, dank little cage in hand. “No refunds!” she said, “It says so on the sign!”
“But -”
“No!”
“This hamster... I’m declaring - ”
“No refunds!”
“You don’t understand! Please!”
“No!”
“Fine, fine!”
And then little Charlie was dead. Just like that.
Stomp.
My father returned to the big, behemoth SUV he bought last month. Big, black gas-guzzler. Gorgeous calls it “the phantom beast.” He walked back. His steel-toe was bloody and gutsy. Grotesque. The entrepreneur was balling her eyes out. Sara was balling her eyes out. This was today.
The fourth of July.
“Don’t worry, honey. It was an honorable death.”
I told her that Hamsters are always having babies. And, the dank little cage isn’t going anywhere.
“The cage is here to stay.” I told her.
Then we went home. Home is East Sawyersville. Home is a nice little town just outside the city limits. Home is where Gorgeous always waits for me. So sexy.
We geared up for the fourth of July fireworks like mad.
We make a big deal out of the fourth over in East Sawyersville. Everyone gets decked out. Thirteen stripes and fifty stars on every corner, every pretty green door. Ribbons and colored paper strung up, weaving in and out of the giant oak trees and maple trees like big red, white and blue snakes. We pull out the stops.
And Gorgeous, he’s very patriotic, you know. He pulls out the stops, too.
He dyes that sexy, thick, blonde hair red, white, and blue.
He wears this hot, tight, sleeveless number that really shows off his arms - they’re so ripped...
The tank top. It’s got “USA” written across the front in fat, black marker. Very patriotic. That is what he looked like earlier tonight. And we were walking, the people’s eyes on us. The town hall for the fourth. And all the people glanced; they couldn’t help it - their eyes following the motion of his fingertips up and down my back, his lips brushing across my cheeks, his palms rubbing against my...
Oh, the people always look. He’s just so Gorgeous. So sexy. Everything a boy should be.
Gorgeous. That’s my boyfriend.
We spent an hour or so with my family at the town hall and made our way back to Gorgeous’ car by eight o’clock, the white Allero. The fireworks were three hours distant, now. There was a black backpack inside the trunk with a few surprises in it. Gorgeous called them “surprises.” Bottle of Jack, dime bag, the usual. All of it. Everything in the night was wild and electric to me, because I was with him, and he is the most beautiful safety, the sexiest security I can imagine...
And I just love the way he dresses.
Gorgeous and I hit a party in Sawyersville, but fled the hole by nine-thirty and soon after were cruising around the city looking for a club to bust into or some kind of event to rock out. It was the fourth of July, after all. In the city, we drove through some of the nastier parts in Gorgeous’ white Allero. Winding snakes of broken brick and brownish, twisted ivy made their way through forgotten sidewalk chunks and decrepit buildings, but the red, white, and blue weren’t there. It was like the colors were forgotten, too.
I caught glimpses of my eyes in the rearview mirror, stained by red and green and yellow neons, blue slices of moonlight, taking shots and smoking unmemorable joints; I felt a familiar warmth, absolute warmth, flood my veins and my vision; Gorgeous’ ripped arm around my neck, his long fingers stroking my hair and my cheek...
The birth of a nation.
Now it was ten o’clock. One hour. Then the skies would be ablaze. Gorgeous and I had this wicked conversation while we were looking for a party, cruising up and across the downtown. Some darkie, he ran across the street in the midst of all this heavy traffic. Darkies piss Gorgeous off like nothing I have ever seen. He doesn’t think they appreciate what they’ve got enough, living in a country like this.
“I swear to God, these dark-ass fucking cocoons! Do they think they’re invincible?” he asked me.
“Probably.” I said, with this obvious hint of distaste fresh on my tongue. As if to say, “Of course.”
“Did you see the way he ran into the street like that?” He slid one of those ripped arms behind my back. “All these darkies think they’re fucking invincible, I swear!”
“Yep.”
“Maybe they wouldn’t be so goddamn poor if they stopped stealing, and started working.”
“Of course.” I put my hand on his thigh.
“This fucking city is swarming with them.”
“Is it ever. They make it smell bad.” I ran my fingertips over his washboard stomach, watched his eyes try to take in this entire dank, poor, awful world through his crystal-clear windshield.
“Sucking off the tit of my tax dollars...”
I flicked at his neck with my tongue.
“Mmmhmm...”
He slid his hand up my shirt.
“Fucking niggers. They’ll bite you if you’re not careful...”
“I love you.”
Nearly eleven o’clock. Twenty minutes.
“I love you.”
And we collapsed into each other's all-American bodies.
The whiskey was hot and quick in my blood, now. Five, six shots. Three joints made my eyes like heavy anchors. A graceful shower had come and gone, and made the pavement slick in five minute’s time. We were parked in the back lot of some independent movie house, along one of the nicer avenues in the downtown. It was all too much, all of it. My anchor lids were too heavy and I found myself sleeping in the midst of weird dreams.
When I awoke, the digital clock read ten fifty-five. Ten minutes. The dreams clung to my brain like sharp pins. I dreamt of being devoured by little Charlie. He had grown to a monstrous size. His teeth were jagged and frightful and dripping with saliva. I was running from him down a city avenue lined with darkies and he was ripping and slashing, trying to eat me with every last ounce of energy he could summon.
He wanted my blood.
When my lids lifted again, we were barreling like a broken wagon toward East Sawyersville and the fresh, green lawns, and the fireworks, and the red, white, and blue snakes, and I witnessed little Charlie’s face, glaring, malicious, in the fresh puddles that had collected in the forgotten sidewalk chunks. And my little sister’s face was in my hazy mind, and she was stabbing everywhere blindly, with these skinny pencils.
Ten fifty-eight. Two minutes. Now, here we are.
We’re rocketing down the length of some sick avenue in the downtown, twisted, Gorgeous is taking shots of hot whiskey, feeling as though he let time escape his taxpaying grasp in that parking lot, he looks so sexy, we’re waiting for the fireworks, waiting, waiting, hoping that the sky doesn’t ignite before we reach the happy pretty faces in the town that is a hole, loving one another, mauling each other’s all-American bodies, damning darkies, smoking joints, sipping shots, celebrating the birth of a nation, when he sees the one, the-straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back.
And the steel-toe flashes in my mind.
The darkie is laid out, asleep, maybe dead, along the double yellow in the middle of the street. He’s a tall nigger. At least six-foot-five. Takes up a bunch of the road. Gorgeous screams at his motionless body:
“Get out of the street, bum! Get a job, bum!”
The nigger stirs. He says, “Uhhh...Uhh...”
“Get out of the street, nigger!”
“Uhh....uhhh...Wha...?”
“Save up your crack money and buy a bed, darkie! Get out of the street, darkie!”
“Uhh... Fuck you...”
“Fine, fine!”
Eleven o’clock.
Vroom.
And Gorgeous kills a darkie! On East Main, the sparkling white Allero, the liter of Jack, all of it. The sky ablaze. Honorable death number two. Now the fireworks are popping off in the horizon like nation-colored nukes, and Gorgeous stares into my stone-cold face with his oh-so-sexy eyes, those hazel knockouts, and I let them bore into me, and I realize there is... nothing.
Nothing but an opportunity. An impulse.
And he looks at me as if to say, “Don’t worry, honey. It was an honorable death.” And the darkie, he is absolutely flat beneath the massive steel and rubber of the white Allero, and honorable death number two twitches and dies, showers of red, white, and blue spark like bullets across the sky. And I watch the fireworks. The sky is ablaze and I find myself lost in the weird dreams again, and I’m telling myself, over, and over, and over...
“The cage is here to stay, the cage is here to stay, the cage is here to stay...”
__________________
we the thug life riders, west side till we die
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