The Book of a Thousand Sins Page 8

  “Yeah, I thought about that. You living forever as a hideously scarred freak, disgusting even to yourself. I thought it would be fitting for you to know a little bit of the pain Tracy is going to feel going through the rest of his life without eyes. Then I heard that your wounds were mortal. That you wouldn’t make it out of this hospital alive even without my intervention and the thought of you dying with a smile on your face believing that you were going to meet your maker. . . . Well, I just couldn’t allow that. I had to make sure that you knew every minute that your life ticked away just where your death would take you. I had to make sure that you felt that fear.”

  Father O’Reilly squeezed the respirator tube shut and Abdin once again began to choke and flop around on the bed like an overturned cockroach.

  “Do you feel the fear now Abdin? Do you know that you are about to die? You see, you pathetic little moron, this life was all you had, your only chance at happiness and you threw it all away on some bullshit ideology, for a God and a heaven that does not even exist. Well my friend, eat shit and die!”

  The terrorist who had so callously taken seven innocent lives and forever altered dozens of others, screamed for his mortal soul and the guards rushed into the room just as Father Martin O’Reilly pulled the tube out of his neck and threw the murderous zealot into cardiac arrest. The guards grabbed for the priest too late before he shoved the butt of his cigar into the tube and jumped back into their arms as the oxygen tent exploded. Abdin was on fire. His flesh sizzled and ran like butter as the ultra-hot oxygen-fed flames consumed his living flesh. Without the smoke alarm inside the room, the sprinkler system came on too late. By the time the flames were extinguished there was little left of the terrorist. The priest watched the heart monitor flat-line as Sharod Abdin ceased to be.

  “Ashes to ashes you son-of-a-bitch!”

  The Sooner They Learn

  Pain is the nervous system’s primary indicator that we are doing something that might compromise the integrity of our bodies. It prevents us from destroying ourselves. To not know pain is to not understand what it takes to survive and succeed. Darrell was an educator, a teacher of pain. He had a warehouse of agonies concentrated within him that he needed to share, to diffuse amongst all those who had yet to know it. Those who needed to learn.

  The boys walked past Darrell followed by the pungent aroma of tobacco. They were perhaps only eight or nine years old. Way too young to be smoking. The larger of the two boys held out a pack of Newports to his shorter friend as he coughed and choked on the coffin nail dangling from his own lip. He was obviously not used to smoking. Perhaps he could still be saved? Darrell began to follow the two boys, listening to their conversation, looking for the perfect opportunity to issue his sermon.

  “Hey Sam, take a hit off this.” The larger boy said, shoving the pack of Newports into his friend’s hand.

  “Naw, Joey. You know I don’t smoke. Besides, my mom would kill me if I came home with my breath smelling like an ashtray.”

  Sam tried to hand the smokes back to Joey who snatched them from his hand.

  “Damn Sam! You’s a little bitch! I thought you was down? I was going to pick up some weed later. I suppose you wouldn’t smoke that neither?”

  “Hell no! My mom would beat the hell out of me if she smelled that shit on me!”

  “I can’t believe what a little punk you are. You scared of your mom? The bitch is like in her fifties! What the fuck is she going to do? I’d smack the hell out of my mom if she tried to talk some shit to me. I do whatever the hell I want!”

  Joey took another long draw on his cigarette, smoking it down to the filter, then dug into his pack of Newports and pulled out another, looking around to make sure the other kids in the playground were watching so they could see how cool he was. Darrell sat across the playground on a park bench watching Joey with a tear rolling down his cheek and an anger building within him that seemed to spill from his emotion filled eyes into the air around him.

  “Another child that we have failed.” He whispered, wiping away the tear with the tattered sleeve of his mangy plaid fur coat.

  “That kid knows nothing about pain.” Darrell thought. “He knows no consequences for his actions. It’s all fun and games to him. I have to teach him.” Darrell knew all about life, all about pain. He knew that it built character, made you strong, taught you discipline. He knew that it was something every child needed to know about.

  Darrell freely acknowledged that he had failed his own children. He had let the world take them and it had broken them like kites in a hurricane. He watched them spin out of control into the maelstrom of drugs and crime until their shattered fragments had fallen headlong into the abyss, one in the grave and the other in prison. It was his fault. He’d been too permissive, too liberal. He’d allowed them to make up their own minds, make their own mistakes, hadn’t set down enough rules, hadn’t taught them about consequences and repercussions. Linda and Jake had grown up thinking the world revolved around them, that they were invincible. Now they were lost and it was Darrell’s fault. He had failed them. But there were many other children in the world and he would not fail them. He would teach them all.

  Darrell rose from the bench and stalked out of the park after Joey.

  “The sooner they learned.” He mumbled as he closed the gap between them.

  ***

  Joey’s eyes burned from the thick miasm of tobacco smoke that choked the room. He coughed repeatedly and started to retch. The unmistakable click of the hammer cocking back on the revolver aimed at him by the fearsome old man sitting in the corner, immediately silenced his coughing fit. Quickly, he put the cigar back to his lips and sucked down more smoke.

  He looked over at the huge disheveled old man sitting beside him. Joey’s frightened bloodshot eyes pleaded with him, but the old man’s eyes were ruthlessly silent. Joey coughed again and Darrell leaned over and placed the cocked and loaded .38 caliber Colt revolver directly to Joey’s head. The boy winced as he felt the chilling bite of the metal pressed against his temple; still he continued to dry heave. He had regurgitated all that he could and his throat was now raw with the acid burn of stomach bile and the caustic fumes raking at his esophagus as he was forced to inhale more of the pungent smoke. The boy’s body began to hitch with sobs as tears raced down his cheeks.

  Joey wanted to beg Darrell to let him stop but held himself back. He had begged the old man just minutes before only to be snatched out of his seat by the jaw and dragged within inches of the man’s enraged countenance, which had twisted into a horrible scowl.

  The old man stared into Joey’s eyes looking as if he was about to bite his face off, then he spun the barrel on the revolver and dry-fired the gun against the boy’s temple. The hammer had fallen on an empty chamber with a dull hollow click and Joey felt his anus clench up and his testicles rise up into his stomach. A violent trembling shook his entire body and Joey had nearly feinted. He had seen the old man put three bullets into the revolver. He knew that the chances of him surviving another round of Russian roulette were not good.

  The old man took the cigar from the boy’s lips and pressed it into his own palm where it sizzled as it scalded his flesh.

  “You stop smoking again and this is going in your eye.” He said in a voice that was hoarse and raspy as if he had just smoked six boxes of cigars himself. Joey put the cigar back to his lips and sucked down more smoke.

  Joey had never felt so sick or scared before. He swooned and his stomach rolled as he sucked on the huge cigar. It no longer felt cool. It no longer made him feel like a man. Six empty cigar cartons lay on the floor amongst the butts and ashes of nearly a hundred cigars and six more cartons sat waiting for him. Joey felt like he was going to die. If the cigar smoke didn’t kill him then he knew Darrell probably would.

  Darrell was a child’s nightmare. He was the real boogie man. Draped about his neck was a necklace of severed Barbie doll heads, pacifiers, and the miscellaneous limbs of broken action figures.
The moth-eaten fur coat that Joey had originally thought was plaid was in fact fashioned from the hides of fur toys, Teddy bears, stuffed rabbits, and big purple dinosaurs. Most of them still had their little glass eyes intact and they stared out of that bizarre collage of artificial pelts as if beseeching you to rescue them. Some of the fur looked real however and were in the perfect shape of small dogs and cats. Some of these still appeared to have their skulls intact, though minus the eyes. It looked like some last minute attempt at a homemade Halloween costume or the place where childhood dreams found their death.

  He was a huge man; well over two hundred pounds with a hard athletic build. He had a head full of gray hair that was wild and unwashed. His skin looked like some type of hard wrinkled leather. Cold gray eyes stared out from the weathered landscape of his face without emotion except when they flashed brilliant with rage. Joey had passed him numerous times in the playground as he sat on the swings. They jokingly called him the Boogie man and made up stories about him kidnapping and punishing bad kids. Joey had noticed the haunted look in some of the other kid’s eyes when he made boogie man jokes, but he had always laughed it off thinking they were just little punks scared of a fairy-tale. Now he knew that he wouldn’t be making jokes like that again. Now he knew the stories were real.

  Joey finally fainted just short of finishing his last box. Darrell stepped back dropping the pistol from the boy’s head to allow the limp body to fall to the concrete floor. He left the door open as he left. When Joey awoke he’d realize that he’d been only yards away from his own house in his dad’s tool shed. He’d crawl into the house and try to sleep off the whole experience. He wouldn’t tell his dad what happened though. They never tell. They knew they deserved it.

  There were no more good parents, Darrell thought to himself as he lumbered off down the street. The kind who knew when a child needed a trip to the woodshed and a belt or a switch pulled from an old tree lain across his backside ‘til the welts ran with blood. The kind who knew how to pinch you until your flesh turned purple for giggling in church during service, while daring you to make another sound.

  Nowadays the child ruled the parent. They threw tantrums when they didn’t get what they wanted and parents gave in just to keep them quiet. Didn’t they know how easily quieted the child was who knew that a scream would immediately bring a slap across the face? Didn’t they know that one day these kids would have to learn that the world did not bend to their wills and may even roll right over them leaving their broken bodies behind? There were no more good parents to teach these lessons. That’s why they needed Darrell.

  It was already getting dark when he left Joey’s back yard. The shadows had locked arms to form battalions of night that laid siege to the entire town. Darrell locked arms with the shadows too. They were his friends. His allies. He moved among them easily. Few people even noticed him as he traveled among his tenebrous troops. He was just another penumbra in an army of darkness.

  The couple making love in the Cadillac Escalade parked by the curb didn’t notice him either. Darrell would have likewise paid them no attention if it hadn’t been for the fact that he saw the school books in the backseat of the car as he passed.

  “Children,” Darrell hissed in disgust.

  “Children fornicating in public.”

  The disheveled old man drew back a fist wrapped tight in rags and punched it through the back window just as the boy’s scrawny naked ass rose into the air preparing to impale the eager virgin beneath him on his throbbing young cock. He grabbed the boy by the hair and dragged him out through the passenger side window in a hail of tempered glass.

  When the boy hit the ground and rolled over, his face snarled up into a grimace of rage and confusion, Darrell could see that the kid was barely fourteen years old; not even old enough to be driving let alone fucking in his father’s car. The boy wasn’t even wearing a condom.

  “You think you’re ready to be a father?” Darrell growled as he snatched the boy up by one arm. The boy swung at him with his free hand, missed, then bent down to pull up his pants and underwear to hide his diminishing erection.

  Darrell reached down and grabbed the boy by his genitals, balls and all. The boy let out a helpless squeal.

  “I asked you a question boy.”

  “Leave him alone!” The girl had shrugged her clothes back on and was yelling at Darrell through the shattered window. Darrell drew back the hand he’d been holding the boy up with and slapped the girl back into the car.

  “I’ll deal with you later.” He said turning his attention back to the boy. He tugged on the boy’s penis stretching it out until it felt like it would tear right out from between his legs.

  “Aaaaaaargh! Fuck man, that shit hurts! Let me go motherfucker! What are you her father or something? We were just having a little fun. Jesus, don’t hurt me! Arrgh! Heeeelp!!! Fuck! Let me go!”

  Darrell leaned in close until his foul breath, reeking of rotten candy, steamed in his face.

  “I should rip it the fuck off and keep it on ice until you’re old enough to know what to do with it!” He reached into the car and dragged the girl out of the car by her hair. He seized her by the throat and held her against the car.

  “I’m not your father. I care a hell of a lot more than that. So, I’m only going to say this one time. If I ever catch you two going at it again than I’ll make sure you never have to worry about ruining your lives by catching AIDS or herpes or hepatitis or getting pregnant. I’ll rip your cock right off and I’ll fill your pussy full of super glue and sew it the fuck closed! You are too young! Do you understand me?” They both nodded with eyes filled with tears. He let them go and they ran off down the street.

  When they were a block away the boy turned around and yelled.

  “You crazy motherfucker! I’m calling the cops!” Maybe he would. Maybe he wouldn’t. Darrell really didn’t care either way. He knew one thing for certain though. That relationship was over. He aimed at the center of the boy’s back as he ran off down the street and squeezed off a shot. The boy’s back erupted and bloomed bright red just before he pitched forward onto his face, hitting the asphalt with a wet smack. His prone body convulsed for a second and then lay still. He wasn’t dead but Darrell knew that he had likely shattered his spine. He wouldn’t be getting any young girls pregnant now and definitely wouldn’t be catching AIDS. The horny little bastard wouldn’t be able to feel anything below the waist for the rest of his life. The girl screamed and ran even faster, disappearing around the corner. Darrell chuckled to himself and continued down the street sticking tight to the shadows just in case the police were already out looking for him.

  Darrell walked another four blocks to the big shopping mall on Market Street. He entered the Sears department store and wandered around in a trance. He was thinking about his own children again when he heard the child screaming over in the toy section. He remembered when Linda and Jake used to scream like that when they wanted something. How he’d always given in after they’d embarrassed him, enduring the looks of pity and disgust on the faces of other parents as they watched him struggle with his undisciplined brats. He remembered that look on their faces that asked, “Why doesn’t he give those two little monsters a good spanking?” Back then he’d felt that corporal punishment was cruel. Now, after seeing how they’d turned out, staying out all hours of the night, drinking, using drugs, getting into fights, having sex at ages thirteen and fourteen, stealing, dropping out of school, one eventually going to prison and the other becoming a crack whore who overdosed on heroin after being used and discarded by half the perverts in town, he realized that not disciplining them more harshly had been the true cruelty. They had never listened to a damn thing he said to dissuade them from their self-destructive behavior and now they were lost forever.

  The sound of that child screeching for his harried mother to buy him a new PlayStation video game, brought back all those memories and Darrell stormed over to them fuming mad and dangerously close to exploding
.

  The screaming, crying, cussing, undisciplined little cur threw a convulsive tantrum while still clinging to its mother’s leg. Darrell was amazed when he saw the little beast ball up its fingers into a fist and punch his mother in the abdomen. The redheaded little terror was barely five years old and already he was in control of his parent.

  “I want it! I want it! I want it!”

  “Stop it!” The woman yelled back in a voice that quivered with emotion. She was near the breaking point, teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Her hellacious offspring screeched at her in a shrill whine that raised the hair on Darrell’s neck. The redheaded demon threw itself on the floor and began to kick like an overturned cockroach. This was another one who still believed that the universe should bend to its will and that any frustration to its desires could be easily dispelled with a few well-placed and infinitely irritating screams. Every moment that he went undisciplined was another day in jail, or on drugs, or selling his ass on the streets. He had to be taught.

  The entire store seemed to be staring at the little shrieking harpy and its mother with disapproving eyes, awaiting the moment when the obviously overwhelmed woman would actually begin to act like a parent and silence her sons fit of egocentric rage with some corrective discipline in the form of a slap. It would never happen, not until the child was too old for it to do any good.

  The moment dragged on and on with the mother withering beneath the child’s aural assault, slowly being conquered, just on the verge of admitting defeat and giving in to her son’s whim. In a last ditch effort to regain a control that had obviously been abdicated long ago, the mother gave voice to her parental inadequacies with that cry of defeat that masqueraded as a threat but only symbolized failure and imminent resignation to all those who heard it, including the delinquent it was meant to correct.

  “Wait ‘til your father gets home! Do you want me to call Daddy?”