Dog Day Afternoon

[MK Kilmarnock]

The first strike was down across the boy's neck and upper back. This resulted in a dull thud that was understated but characteristic of hitting soft flesh, though there had to be a bone or two somewhere along the line. But Justin had also expected a grunt of pain, the guttural 'ugh' like the noise Benny had made when he was struck in the head.

This had gone very differently. It seemed that murder really was funny to the other boy, even when he was the victim himself. Justin's jaws clamped together and his neck grew rigid; each subsequent strike was made with the intent to silence the laughing. But it only grew louder, at least for a while. Each blow to his body with the tire iron was unrefined, unrestrained and imprecise while the sack of meat that was his punching bag fell just a bit more prone. One hit clipped the back of the boy's head.

The laughing got quieter. The next hit was a solid blow to the back of the skull. The laughing stopped. Justin threw two more in, just for good measure, loudly exclaiming a nonsense word with both hits. As he pulled back from the last wallop, he thrust his hips back where his feet were not quick enough to follow. Bouncing down ass-first onto the boat house floor, Justin scooted and scrambled backward away from the now-silent boy who had appeared from nowhere, hands splayed on other side of him to keep his head up and out of harm's way. The sturdy metal rod that had assisted him in most of his endeavors found its way into his left hand this time while his right did the heavy lifting of trying to drag himself away from the scene of the crime. Justin stared in disbelief at what he'd just done in a red-eyed rage, until his attention was pulled instead to stare at what decidedly non-floor object his right hand had just brushed against.

He came eye-to-glassy-eye with the vacant and dilated stare of the girl who he'd murdered first. Justin may as well have just touched a red-hot stove burner for how quickly he pulled his hand way, careening and clumsily steering his dust-covered bottom to try and find some neutral space on the floor that wasn't occupied by a dead body. He stared at his 'hard work' for a while, knees tucked up to his chest. Nobody but him was capable of making a sound, and he was the only one capable of hearing it anymore. Just as well. Justin never did find it comfortable when people listened to him cry.

His funk could only last so long, the day putting him on a natural timer that limited him with what brief hours of daylight were left. Given how low the sun was as Justin peered through the window from his sullen seat in the corner, it was more like minutes before dusk. Back home he would have several more hours of active time trying to get through his homework or his remedial lessons. On a good day he'd be playing a game or listening to music instead, but the comforts of home were far behind him unless he paved a future for himself... on a road made from his classmates, even. Now, when the sun went down, the game changed. Everything became about visibility - you can'd do shit if you can't see three feet in front of you. He no longer had time to bitch and moan.

Earlier, these two had been eating and sharing food; Justin had ascertained that much from a while ago on the rock, so at least one of them had to have some sort of supplies on them. His eyes swept around the boathouse interior. Dead boy, dead girl. Bags near each of them. The handgun the girl held and attempted to use, now tucked away near to the corner far from her upturned, slightly curled fingers. Some strange things, like scrapings or dead leaves in the middle of the floor, which on closer inspection were revealed to be discarded orange peels. Justin decided to search the large daypack nearest to the girl first.

He was delighted to find several of the energy bars that they'd all been issued still remaining in her bag, possibly even more than he'd started out with. He immediately fetched his own bag and dragged it back before hastily unzipping it, transferring everything he could. He took the bottles of water as well; water was not impossible to find on the island, but Justin trusted the bottles more than he did the lake. Knowing this place, he'd go down to the water's edge and get real close to take a sip, only to be greeted with the bloated face of-

He immediately stopped thinking about that, squinted his eyes shut until the flashing lights helped him to forget. He opened them and found the half-eaten remains of an orange, probably the same one the peels on the floor belonged to. Justin held up the remnants of the orange pathetically and turned it around in his hand. What a joke, that it all boiled down to this. Maybe the boy was right to laugh. Justin was every bit as sad and pathetic as this orange. He halted his search for the moment to stuff the orange in his mouth, several sections at a time, chewing with his mouth open and letting jets of juice squirt from his lips before he managed to choke down most of it and move on. He wiped his mouth and licked his fingers to try and rid them of the sticky juice residue before washing down the orange with half a bottle of water. Tucking his newly acquired foodstuffs away for later, Justin kept digging. Paper, colored pencils and crayons... There was a folded piece of paper in particular that caught his eye. It looked to be a letter, maybe written by the girl. A letter to somebody on the island? A letter home? He nervously pulled it an inch out of the bag.

... No, Justin decided. He didn't want to read this. He didn't need to get to know the already-dead girl even better and start feeling worse about what he'd done. He would struggle to read it anyway; typeface was bad enough with his dyslexia, reading somebody else's handwriting was absolute hell. The tucked the letter back and to the side before digging his way to the box that took up the most space in the bag. Clearing the spare sweater off of it (Justin considered taking it for later, just in case it started to get too cold), he pried the lid off.

A rifle. Holy hell, he had a rifle AND a pistol now! The rifle was in pieces, but there'd been a booklet with it that had a picture of the gun in its assembled form, presumably an instruction manual. Justin prayed the manual was like an Ikea manual rather than a wordy one, because he only had so much time for puzzles at the moment. He pulled the box out of the bag and scooted it back to the corner he'd designated as 'his', along with his bag and the food that was now his. He went back for the sweater, retrieved it, and eventually remembered to snatch up the handgun too.

He had food. He had water. He had company... but that 'had' was past tense. In order to keep from locking eyes with their creepy stares, Justin dragged the two other bags over their respective owners' faces (the boy's bag, as it turned out, had nothing good in it save for a spare first aid kit that Justin considered taking, but his own bag was becoming rather short on room). Bodies didn't start to smell that fast, so he could stay here one night...

Just pretend they were sleeping.

Pretend, for once, that life is fucking normal, and that when you wake up, everything's going to be okay.

Justin was going to keep figuring this shit out.

((Continued in the DANGAH ZONE))