Our Lady Chaos, page 27
part #5 of Bloodletter Series
Someone slammed into Eddie’s side, driving him into the wall of lockers, and he lost his hold on Jack’s foot. He looked down at one of Jack’s cronies, pressed into his chest. Eddie lifted his arm high above his head, as John Travolta had in that disco movie, and then brought his elbow down as fast and as hard as possible, right in the middle of the other boy’s neck. His elbow shrieked with the impact, and the other boy squealed the way Gil’s pigs did when slaughtered. The pressure on his chest, the force that held him up against the lockers, disappeared in an instant.
A roaring filled Eddie’s ears, a roaring similar to the surf at the beach on a windy day. Space had opened in the crowd of kids headed toward fourth period. Inside the ring of staring faces, stood Eddie, and Jack. Jack’s crony was in the ring, though he wasn’t standing, he was on his hands and knees shaking his head like a stunned animal.
Eddie’s eyes strayed around the circle of leering faces, coming to a stop only when he saw a dusky-hued woman standing behind the ring of students. She grinned at him, her sharp black fangs glinting in the florescent lights, and as she did so, her locks of blue-black hair writhed and twined around each other, the bright blue and purple highlights dancing in the bright fluorescent lights that marched down the ceiling of the hallway.
Jack’s face was purple to match the highlights of the scary lady’s hair, and his mouth was a flat, thin line, but his eyes blazed like spotlights in the dark. At his side, his hands were curled into tight fists—so tight that his knuckles blanched. “What the hell are you doing, Mitchell?” he grated.
Eddie had nothing to say, but his rage did. He stepped forward, eyes still on the scary lady, and swung his foot into the midsection of the boy on his hands and knees, kicking as hard as he could. Her grin stretched broader, and she nodded at him. She stretched her arms wide, and there were too many of them—like the goddess Kali. Then, and only then, did his gaze track to Jack’s. His face had gone hard as if carved from stone, all except for one muscle underneath his left eye that had started to twitch.
“Stop it!” shouted Jack.
Eddie pulled his foot back and kicked the other boy again, putting his full weight behind it. The boy on the ground collapsed, his arms wrapped around his belly, rocking back and forth and making a mewling sound as a kitten might. Jack took two steps forward, and his hands arced out, lightning-quick, one impacting each of Eddie’s cheeks. The blows were hard, and Eddie knew they should hurt, but they didn’t. It was as if he wore the thickest wooden armor ever made. He stepped over the boy on the ground and punched Jack in the throat with all his strength, turning at the waist and throwing his shoulder behind the blow. Jack made a retching sound, but Eddie didn’t care. He punched him again, this time with his left hand, right in the nose. Blood exploded down the front of Jack’s shirt, and he squawked like a chicken.
With a lesser foe, the fight might have ended right there, but Jack knew how to fight. He brought his hands up to block his face, then snapped out his right, punching Eddie in the left eye. His other hand followed a burning arc through the air, a massive haymaker, and slammed into Eddie’s right ear, and Eddie saw stars for a moment, staggering back into the lockers behind him.
He shook his head to clear it, much as he had in the moments that had started the fight, then tucked his chin down and charged at Jack, sprinting, pumping his legs as fast and as hard as he could. He slammed into the older boy, his head ramming into Jack’s solar plexus, and the breath exploded from Jack’s mouth. The crowd erupted with noise as Eddie drove Jack back into the group of watching students.
Over the noise of the crowd, Eddie caught her voice. “Don’t let him get back up, Eddie,” the voice said. “Don’t let him ever get back up.” Her voice rang with passion, the way the women on Uncle Gil’s porno movies—the ones he pretended no one knew about—sounded.
Together, Eddie and Jack fell, Eddie on top, Jack slamming his head into the linoleum floor when they hit. The forest of legs shifted around them, widening, giving them space.
Eddie put his hands on Jack’s collarbones and pushed himself into a seated position, straddling Jack’s belly, his knees in Jack’s armpits. He lifted his arms and drove them down into Jack’s face, in the way a silverback gorilla pounded the ground. He pummeled Jack without mercy, all the while hearing the woman roar and laugh and cheer. Again and again and again, Eddie lifted his arms and then drove them into Jack’s head and face.
Around them, the kids had gone quiet, shocked at the level of violence Eddie had brought to the fight. Beneath him, Jack whimpered.
The sexy woman laughed into the silence. The scary lady.
“Stop it! Stop it, Mitchell!” someone shouted.
But Eddie didn’t stop. His muscles began to burn as if they were on fire, and still, he didn’t stop. The silence of the people watching didn’t stop him. The scary lady’s laughter drove him on, fueled his rage, his hatred. Jack’s crony—the one he had kicked twice in the stomach—shouting his name didn’t stop him.
“Someone get a teacher!”
Up and down. Up then down. Up. Down. Up. Down, a sickening crunch rattling up through the bones and joints of his arms each time he brought his fist down on Jack’s face.
Blood slicked his fists, ran across the linoleum floor, and still, he lifted his hands high and brought them down, thinking of asteroids slamming into the Earth.
Jack no longer whimpered, no longer tried to keep his hands in front of his face, no longer rocked from side to side trying to get out from under Eddie. He just lay there, shuddering with each impact, twitching a little, and bleeding.
“Mitchell! You stop this right now!”
Someone grabbed him from behind and pulled him off Jack. Eddie whirled bringing his blood-slicked hands up in front of him, ready to fight.
The scary lady cackled with glee, but it faded away—as if she’d walked down the corridor and turned a corner.
“Mitchell!” shouted Coach Randall. “What’s gotten into you, boy?”
Eddie stood there, gasping for breath, and then his gaze fell to the floor and began to search for his other treasures. He dropped his hands, almost sighing with relief as his burning muscles relaxed.
“You there! Stevens!” said Coach Randall. “Get down to the nurse’s office. Tell her we need her out here right now. Jesus Christ on a crutch. Tell her we might need an ambulance, Stevens.”
One of the onlookers turned and started to walk up the hall toward the office.
“Dammit, Stevens! You run!”
Eddie heard all of it, but it didn’t seem as though he were an integral part of events. To him, it didn’t seem that he had ever been a part of any of it. He glimpsed electric green out of the corner as eye and whirled toward it.
“Where in the hell do you think you’re going, Mitchell?” asked Coach Randall. “Get back here, boy.”
Eddie ignored him, shoving his way through the crowd, and then stooped and picked up The Demon, running a finger across its top, leaving a streak of congealing blood. He put the car in the palm of his left hand and curled his fingers around it and felt better—calmer, more relaxed. With a slight smile, he turned to search for more of his missing treasures, and the bitter, stygian hatred retreated into the hole in his middle.
Eddie pushed and elbowed his way through the crowd, his eyes turned downward, darting this way and that, looking for gleaming metal and bright colors. The other students in the hallway stepped away from him when he came close, and the eerie silence that had fallen over them during the fight continued unabated. No one said a word as he pushed past them, no one shoved back.
A heavy hand fell on Eddie’s shoulder. “I asked you where the hell you’re going, Mitchell?”
Coach Randall was the football, wrestling, and weightlifting coach for the high school. He also taught biology, but that didn’t matter as he squeezed Eddie’s shoulder with his formidable strength. The coach must’ve carried three hundred pounds of muscle, although he had a bit of middle-aged paunch around the waist. He stood six-foot-four-inches tall, and he loomed over Eddie’s five-foot-four scrawny frame.
Eddie weighed ninety-seven pounds with a five-pound weight in his hand, but despite the difference in their weights, Eddie shrugged off Coach Randall’s hand as if it were nothing.
He didn’t do it out of anger, not even out of irritation or pique, he did it because Coach Randall’s hand kept him from continuing his search. White noise filled his head, and nothing penetrated it.
Behind him, Coach Randall squawked with outrage, but Eddie ignored him. Out of the corner of his eye he’d caught a flash of bright orange. It might be his Dixie Challenger or his Super Scraper. In either case he wanted it.
He pushed his way toward the glint of orange, but Coach Randall’s hand fell on his shoulder once again. With his other hand, Coach Randall grabbed Eddie’s upper arm and spun the boy to face him.
“Have you gone crazy, Eddie Mitchell? Have you lost your fool mind?”
Eddie looked at him, his expression empty, his mind blank—filled with an impenetrable white noise of no-thought—took a breath and then turned his head to look for the flash of orange again. He tried to take a step, but Coach Randall held him fast.
“Are you on drugs, Mitchell?” Randall hissed.
Moving as slow as molasses in winter, Eddie turned his face back toward the coach. The questions Coach Randall was asking him made little sense to Eddie. Can’t the man see what’s going on here? Eddie tilted his head a little bit to the side and shook it. It’s blazingly apparent what’s going on here. Any fool can see it.
“Answer me, damn you, Mitchell!” Coach Randall punctuated the statement with a small shake of Eddie's shoulders.
Eddie shook his head again. His eyes strayed, back to where he’d seen the flash of orange, and Randall shook him again, harder.
“What’s the matter with you, Mitchell? What’s gotten into you?”
“Coach Randall?” The girl that had spoken seemed familiar to Eddie, but he didn’t remember her name.
Coach Randall sighed with exasperation. “I’m a little busy, Miss Fox.”
“I–I understand that, Coach. It’s… it’s about all this,” said the girl. She spread her hands as if to encompass all the students in the hall.
“Well?” snapped Randall.
“Jack started it. He always starts it. He’s a bully, and he’s not happy unless he’s picking on someone. Him and his friends were picking on Eddie. They ripped his backpack and scattered his stuff all over the place. And Eddie…” Her gaze settled on Eddie, as light as a feather. “Eddie was just trying to get his stuff back. Jack and this bozo jumped him. Eddie was just defending himself.” She smiled at Eddie, and it warmed him like the first rays of spring sunshine after a long, hard winter.
“Has everyone lost their fool minds?” muttered Coach Randall. “This is a little more than just defending himself.” He jerked his head to where Jack lay bleeding. The boy still hadn’t moved or made a noise.
Eddie turned in the direction of his nod, and his gaze settled on Jack’s face. There was blood everywhere, coming from Jack’s torn lips, his nose—wrenched to the side. Both of his eyes were already starting to turn that sickly green shade that meant deep bruises were in his future and swollen almost shut. Beside him, two teeth gleamed from the linoleum. Eddie rolled his face away, back toward the flash of orange he’d seen, and he writhed in the big coach’s grasp.
Coach Randall shook him, harder yet again. “You cut that out, Mitchell.”
“He just wants his stuff, Coach,” said the girl.
“Yeah? Well, he can just damn-well wait.” The coach peered around and then stole a peek at the Hot Wheels Eddie held in his hand. “Toys? This is about toys?”
In Eddie’s mind, Coach Randall's voice took on the tenor and pace of Uncle Gil’s, and the rage that had calmed itself by bashing Jack’s face in came roaring back. Eddie shoved The Demon into his pocket and balled his fists.
Coach Randall looked at him with wide eyes and a mouth that hung open. “You’ve gone nuts, son. I don’t think you have any idea what you’re doing anymore.”
Eddie squeezed his fist so tight that his tendons creaked. He wanted to hit the man, he wanted to do to him what he’d done to Jack, but he hadn’t completely lost his mind—not like Coach Randall said.
“You can’t just…” Randall shook his head. “You can’t just do that to someone, Mitchell. There are rules, no matter who’s picking on you. No matter what they do, there are rules.”
Words surged into Eddie’s mouth like hot bile. “Yeah,” he sneered. “Yeah, there’re rules. There are always rules unless somebody is doing something to me. That I’m just supposed to take. That I’m just supposed to ignore. Tell me, Coach Randall, how much did you put up with in high school.”
The coach shook his head and sighed. “Mitchell, it might surprise you. I wasn’t always big, you know.” His gaze drifted to Jack. “Where the hell’s that nurse?” He murmured.
“Jack… He took my things! He ripped my backpack. He scattered my collection, I’ll lose most of them. And these are my best ones. These are the ones I always carry with me. I can’t lose them!” Eddie jerked out of Coach Randall’s grasp and dove toward the spot where he’d seen the flash of orange.
“Mitchell!”
There it was. It sat on its side, its wheels pressed up against the wall as if it were driving on the wall surface. The Dixie Challenger. Something in Eddie’s chest felt warm as he wrapped his fingers around it.
“Make way there! Let the nurse through,” boomed Coach Randall. The big man turned back and spared a glance for Eddie. He lifted one heavy hand and pointed at him. “Don’t you move, Mitchell. I mean it.” With that he turned and began moving the students out of the way so the nurse could get to Jack.
Eddie peered through the forest of feet and legs, looking for reds and blues and silver. Five, he thought. Eight more. I’ll never find them all. Despair weighed him down.
He crawled on his hands and knees, tapping people on the leg with a bloody hand when they didn’t get out of his way, his gaze sweeping back and forth, back and forth. He didn’t know how far his precious collection had scattered as the backpack ripped, but the fight might have spread them even farther.
“Are these…Eddie, are these yours?”
It was the girl, the one who’d stood up for him. He’d already forgotten her name, but he’d never forget her face. His gaze slid from her face down her arm and to her hands that she held together in front of her. Resting on her palms were his Boss Hoss Silver Special, his Three-Window 34, and Warpath.
Tears sprang into his eyes as he looked at the toys, and then he turned his gaze to her face, and she smiled. The day seemed less ugly; the world less beastly. She held the cars out to him, still smiling. He took them one by one and slid them into his front pockets. His eyes never left hers.
“I’ll help you find them all, Eddie,” she said.
The lump in his throat stopped him from answering. It was the first time since his mother had died that anyone had stood up for him.
Half an hour later, Eddie sat in the back of the police car, his hands cuffed behind his back. Other students from the high school stood on the bus ramp staring at him, a few pointing, others whispering to the person standing next to them.
The ambulance sat in front of the police car, and they were just now getting Jack loaded into the back. A pang raced through Eddie as they wheeled Jack by on the gurney. His face had been so…bloody, broken.
Did I do that? Eddie wrinkled his nose. Could I have done that? His memory of the fight had already fragmented.
The principal walked behind the gurney, talking to the nurse and Coach Randall. Every now and again, he darted a glance at Eddie.
The cop who had put him in the car was not John Morton. He had been a little rough as if he were mad at Eddie or something. Eddie had no idea why. It’s not as though the cop and Jack even know each other.
After putting Eddie in the car, the cop had disappeared back into the main building of the school. Eddie had thought he’d been going in to speak to the principal, but the principal stood by the ambulance, and yet the cop did not appear.
Eddie bit the inside of his cheek.
The cop had taken his Hot Wheels and had put them into a big brown grocery bag along with Eddie’s backpack. He had better not lose them, Eddie thought. The girl—Melanie—had found more of his cars before Coach Randall had made her quit looking.
The coach hadn’t allowed her to give them to Eddie, so he didn’t know which cars she’d found, or even how many, but at least she’d found some. He hoped the cop put them with the other vehicles.
The paramedic closed the ambulance’s rear doors and walked around to the front. The principal, the nurse, and Coach Randall, all stood in a little knot, their backs to Eddie. He stared at Coach Randall’s profile, and the man’s face was red. A vein throbbed over his temple.
Coaches never liked Eddie. Too small, he thought. Too much of a wimp. Wonder what they’ll do to me.
At the end of the sidewalk, the scary lady appeared in the shadow of one of the brick pillars that supported the roof over the bus ramp. He was looking right at her as a shadow with the consistency of smoke spewed up from the sidewalk and solidified into her human shape. Her eyes lingered on Eddie’s and didn’t stray. A small smile played on her lips. Unlike before, she didn’t hide in the shadows wrapped in black smoke—she wore a shiny, black leather dress that fell to her ankles, with the slit he remembered running up to her waist on the side of her right leg. Her feet were bare, but immaculately clean—as if the dirt of the world daren’t touch her. Her hair writhed as if the strands had a life of their own. Her midnight-blue eyes spun and spun as she watched him.
As he watched, another plume of smoke shot up behind her. Eddie shook his head; his gaze never wavered. The second plume solidified, and he glimpsed bright red hair and shining orange eyes set in pale skin.
Great. Another one.
Another police car turned into the school parking lot as the ambulance’s engine roared to life. The police car had “CHIEF” painted on the front quarter panels, and Eddie’s stomach sank a little more. The idea of seeing Chief Morton filled him with dread. He didn’t want to see the chief’s expression—his disappointment in Eddie.
