November 2008

Comet Press open for submissions

Our print division, Comet Press, is currently accepting submissions for horror, suspense, and dark crime novels and novellas. Visit www.cometpress.us for details.

Available for order from Comet Press

DEADLINES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF HORROR AND DARK FICTION, will be released in November of 2008! Visit www.cometpress.us

As a Kid
by J.A. Tyler

He used to haunt these streets.

As a kid.

Now tv jumbles whisper through a prairie of carpet stains and a half eaten p b and j bleeding ants. He’s trying to get his mind into a bonus episode of cops and he’s hoping there’ll be at least one with some hookers in it because those are the ones he likes best and maybe that would help him shake this headache. In a cold hand he holds a warm beer and laid across his middle-aged knees and his cut-off denim shorts is a bloodied baseball bat that was signed by Lou Gerhig himself.

But things were different now.

Now Janie was dead from a kind of cancer that choked her in the night. And Charlie was a victim of that Vietnam thing even though most people didn’t ask too many questions about what really happened. Bobby is married with three kids and though he isn’t dead most don’t want his kind of life with all the yelling and the divorce threats and the hope for late night porn on blurred pay per view. Allie used to be his best friend until she grew breasts and starting looking at him strange when he looked at her strange but he’s heard she got married to some used car salesman somewhere out in Reno and people say the black eyes aren’t from falling down the stairs. The guy they used to call Ramble got trapped under a truck somehow changing a tire and now he wheels himself around mostly going to the liquor store and back and nowhere in between. And Chuckie died in a war and Marv died in a war and Sammy survived two wars but then killed himself with a shotgun over Thanksgiving leave some years back. Suzy is in the middle of chemo if he’s remembering it right and though she doesn’t want to end up dead like Janie she’s starting to think that wouldn’t be half bad considering she’s bald as a turtle and losing her flesh in big gouging segments.

In thinking back he remembers.

They used to play stickball all of them down the street or up the street or anywhere that wasn’t hung with stale laundry or the smell of kettle cooked rice and beans. And Janie was a hitter and Charlie batted clean-up and Bobby was something at first most days and both Allie and Ramble could truck in the outfield gutters pretty well and Chuckie was a pitcher that nobody liked and Mary played outfield sometimes and sometimes just sat on the sidelines and Sammy was on third and Suzy was on second and he was most often behind home fielding the wild ones that didn’t cross the plate.

And they always headed home before dark.

But just a few hours ago he found Two Dogs Romero in the city park and asked him what happened last night and he said a lot of things man so he showed him the baseball bat and cranked on his skull until Two Dogs’ right eye was swelled shut and his cheek was wrecked and his long black ponytail hung slimy with blood. But what he didn’t know was that after the police showed up and before Two Dogs was carted away on the gurney an officer asked if he’d like to press charges and Two Dogs just shook his head no because he knew he’d fucked around on somebody else’s wife and he was deserving of the schoolyard things you get.

Because those politics translate.

So now he’s trying to watch the tube but really he’s wondering all nerves about when they’ll ring his bell or pound on the door demanding his wrists in handcuffs with come quietly phrasing. He’s already had enough three-two to buck most of the paranoia but it still comes in jolts when he’s not looking in the right direction or when an officer screams get down on the ground and he can’t tell if it’s on tv or at the front door or in his head. And he didn’t even have the heart to finish his p b and j what with all the blood under his fingernails.

They’re pretty much just ghosts of themselves now.

All bloodied and beaten and left for dead.

But they still play stickball in some way or another.

As a kid.