First Ovation, Dusk Be Told

The stories in First Ovation are works of fiction.

Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Rage! Press under the Authority of BecHavn Publishing and Production Group

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First Edition.

Cover Design by Emery C. Walters and Todd Kachinski Kottmeier ISBN: 978-1-105-77981-7 Printed in the United States of America ragepress.com

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Dedicate this book to those able to look past my faults and find the man I seek to be in life. ____________________

Four Stories ~

Muki [mookee]

Whispers Of A Teenager ~ September 22 ~ 7 pm The ragged rope sliced sharply into Muki’s thin wrists each time the car hit the slightest of potholes torn in the country pavement. The smell of oil and musty carpeting gagged the sixteen-year-old boy, restricting his breathing through the makeshift muzzle placed upon his face. He felt blood trickle down his neck into the clutter-filled trunk of the fairly new Ford Focus. A wisp of red glow pierced the darkness each time the signal activated the turning lights. Not even a full day into autumn, and the chance of survival to attend his senior year grew faint. The four students racing the car made it clear, tonight is the night Muki will die; with a promise of a makeshift grave of kindling wood to be burned alive.

The past six months, the new boy struggled to finish classes at Mt. Rainier Christian Preparatory, and for six months, the students promised to kill him. Peer pressure and torment became an hourly assault; perhaps they calculated they could drive him to suicide. Each class period surrounded Muki with

haters making it clear, Muki needed to leave the school. They told him clearly to drop out, run away, or face the consequences. Warned repeatedly, and ignored by teachers unwilling to take a stand in such a conservative community. The time to leave is now, as God himself sat on their side. God said it was time for Muki to die. He had to die, as nobody gay survived in Puyallup, Washington.

Thirty minutes ago, Muki walked across the student parking lot passing Jacob and Andrew, two of the largest boys in the school. Not even three steps past their car, and Muki found himself sprawled flat on the ragged field used for seniors to park. He noticed the shadow of a stick as it smashed his skull. A flash of white light flickered through his brain as he lost conscientious in the autumn grass.

“What the fuck have you done?” screamed Jacob, looking at his friend is complete terror.

Jacob felt himself physically tremble. He glanced at the blood starting to glisten in the dyed black hair of the boy now crushed into the earth. He stepped forward to pull Andrew backwards, but felt his own weight tumble himself onto the grill of his own car, bracing himself on weak legs.

Andrew dropped the bat next to the lifeless body while glancing quickly across the field of assorted automobiles. None of the other students looked in his direction. He did not say a word, but kept darting his eyes to the left, to the right, back to the right, and finally looking Jacob squarely in the face.

“I don’t know. He glanced away, refusing to look at me with that dumb ass Gothic look, challenging me. It pissed me off, so I hit him!” Jacob felt tears forming in his own eyes; this a start contrast of Andrew’s matter of fact stance.

“Did you kill him?” Jacob’s stomach churned using the word ‘kill’ in a sentence; hardly a question

someone prepares to ask in life, needless at the age of sixteen.

Andrew lifted his foot to nudge the body, but the left arm fell to the ground rolling off the side by force of gravity, “Give me your keys Jacob.”

“What?” The only noise on the field came from inside the car as an old Bob Seger song played on the radio.

“Come on, give me your keys!”

The field began to sway in slow motion, as vomit shot through Jacob’s mouth and through his nose. He found himself staring down at his school lunch scattered across Andrew left shoes and trousers.

“Fuck! Are you kidding me? Give me your damn keys before I hit you next with the bat!”

“They’re in the car. The radio won’t work unless the key is in the ignition.”

Jacob’s mind went into the type of surreal function people find themselves when confronted by unrealistic situations. In the distance, he could hear girls giggling as they crossed the field row by row in search of their car.

“Come on, get with it Jacob,” Andrew shouted as he smacked Jacob’s arm to catch his attention, “I need your help.”

“Help?”

Jacob watched Andrew run to the backend of the Ford to open the trunk, and returned from the opposite side of the car to where Muki laid dormant.

“Come on, come on. I can’t do this alone.”

Confused of the reason to move the body, yet there Jacob found himself dragging the body around the vomit, to the passenger’s side of the car, to the open trunk.

“We can’t be doing this Andrew…” Jacob could not tell if the sentence came from inside his brain or actually said aloud.

“The vomit. A body. A baseball bat. Blood and now my car,” Thoughts bounced back and forth through objections in Jacob’s imagination, but there he was, still helping Andrew.

Nothing defines dead weight more than a limp, motionless body of a person, where each individual limb fights against gravity. The two teenagers struggled to tumble the torso, dragging arms, and legs over the raised wall of the trunk. They never realized Muki to be as lanky as they did in their attempts to maneuver his corpse past the rounded entrance of the trunk. Now they needed to lift him past the two sidewalls of Jacob’s trunk holding Alpine speakers to his new Pioneer AVIC-Z110BT sound system. The more difficulties they encountered, the louder the voices from the girls now approaching the car.

“You boys heading to fair?”

Spared by seconds, the trunk slammed down.

The two boys stood flustered, with frozen facial expressions, staring at Becky.

Becky looked puzzled by their disheveled hair and panicked faces, “Did I catch you doing drugs?”

“No, no…” They both looked at each other, trying to develop any sentence worthy of such bewilderment.

She pressed on, “Holy shit, I caught you doing drugs. I dare you open the trunk.”

Normally, a girl pressing these two men would find herself at the end of a barrage of negative recourse, but Becky is not a regular student. Becky’s large family of beautiful girls moved to Puyallup after her mother’s divorce from Ariel Cunningham, an influential promoter of some of the top rock bands in the world, including U2.

A friendship with Becky made you one of the cool kids in Pierce County, and a hot ticket in neighboring Seattle.

“Porn, it’s porn,” blurted Jacob totally startling Andrew.

Andrew confirmed, “Yes, it’s an embarrassing titty magazines. You just scared the shit out of us.”

“Okay,” the two girls mouthed silently to each other, before letting out a laugh. Only Andrew shared in the laughter.

“We can’t take you,” continued Andrew, realizing Jacob was now lost in his own thoughts, “We’re still waiting for Kenny and Paco. We’re all supposed to be heading to Pierce County Airport for job interviews. They’re hiring two people to clean for winter.”

“Strange. You would think with Mount Rainier closing next month for the winter, they wouldn’t be adding staff.” The girls shrugged their shoulders and moved past the car, “Gross, someone’s puked all over the grass over here; disgusting.”

Becky continued her conversation, as she vanished past another row of cars and out the gate.

“What are you doing Andrew? You have a dead body in the trunk of my car. I can’t afford this kind of trou….” Quickly Jacob found his sentence cut short by the arrival of Paco, followed by Kenny.

“Hey dude, somebody barfed next to your bat!”

Kenny finished the sentence scrunching his face to match his disdain. The three men watched Paco hop over the vomit to pick up the bat.

Andrew glanced around to ensure the four of them were alone, “We need to get the fuck out of here right now.” He reached over, almost yanking Paco back through the mess, starling Kenny.

“Slow down. What’s the hurry? Super WalMart will be there in the morning.”

Andrew continued to drag Paco forcefully to the car, before realizing the panicked expression on Jacob’s face. Suddenly he stopped, aggressively

pushing Andrew’s hand off his sleeve, “What’s your problem Drew? If you’re trying to beat me up, were going to do it right here.” Paco could feel his fingers clench the wooden handle of the bat, before breaking into a light laughter.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” shouted Kenny as he lunged forward to separate the two friends, “What’s all of this about?”

“I’ll explain in the car.”

Without further explanation, the four teens climbed in the car.

Jacob jumped in first remarking, “The keys!”

Kenny and Paco hopped in the back from the passenger side, while Andrew ran to the back of the car. Suddenly the trunk opened startling Jacob screaming from the car, “What are you doing?” Kenny and Paco could feel the ruffling of something large behind their seats.

“I’m using my belt.”

“He’s using his belt for what?” Paco continued, “You two are acting very weird. What did you steal from the school?”

The passenger door opened and in fell Andrew screaming, tilting the car to the side as it rocked with the shift of his weight, “Go, go, go!”

“Where?”

Jacob started the car. The backseat occupants glanced at each other, mimicking the screaming of Andrew. The car moved forward making a squishing sound in the wet grass, pressing vomit into the threads of the new car tires.

In unison, all four of the boys let out a “Ewe,” in almost perfect harmony.

The car continued bouncing through the field before hitting the pavement of the teacher’s parking lot heading out to East Pioneer Way.

The high school was fairly new, and the soil was not kind from last year’s winter. The campus location on the merged intersection of Pioneer and East Canyon Road began the controversy of the Davis Family of Davis Construction. Rumors of Harold Davis rigging the bid, and bribing the placement of the new school in North Puyallup, ran in articles for the past month each Wednesday by the weekly newspaper, the only newspaper covering North Perce County.

Sneak peak to be continued…