Imbroglio

Lee Denison, sitting on the bench next to his locker for the day, is having an asthma attack. He didn't really want to come to this intramural thing. His brother had insisted that he would have a good time. That he needed to get some exercise,sitting around and playing on that computer all day was going to make him fat. Lee thought he got plenty of exercise, considering his condition. Jeremiah  didn't understand what it was like when your lungs just decide that you've had enough oxygen for now, and your brain is decidedly against the motion. He can't find his inhaler.It was in his jeans pocket when he changed into his shorts. It must have fallen out.He was  bending down to look for it when the room reverberated from what had to be an explosion.The fire alarms had gone off almost immediately. Now his face was about three inches from the ass of one very large offensive lineman.#72 is being pushed back by the surge of his peers looking for a spot on the closest bench to them,in case their beloved Coach thinks maybe they had decided to mutiny. He did not want to die staring at sweat stains on a fat kids ass. Worse, he really doesn't want to suffocate with his face buried in that ass. He goes to the floor. A giant Adidas cleat lands close enough to his nose for him to smell the chunks of damp soil and grass buried between the studs. He sees his inhaler.It about to be impaled by the twin of the shoe that nearly shaved his nose off.He tries to yell but his lungs wont let him be heard over the din of the fire alarm. The shoe comes down with the force of a back-pedaling rhino hoof, there is a pop.The last thing Lee Denison ever sees is the hard plastic mouthpiece of his inhaler shatter and the gold stripe down the middle of the fat kids ass as it descends quickly toward his head. He has time to wonder why he didn't see his brother in the locker room before his neck snaps under the weight of Zachary Kerrin, known to most of the boys as Beef.



Beef heard the pop, pondered what he just stepped on, as he fell backward over the bench. He was a big guy, but he couldn't keep his balance against the entire front line of the ZHHS Fightin' Vikings. He tries to get his hands behind him on the lockers to break his fall. His right hand finds air, his left hand gets purchase on a partially closed locker door that slams shut.The momentum is enough to direct his fall over the end of the bench, directly on top of Lee Denisons head; jamming it against the crossbars that serve as the legs.  Several vertebrae are obliterated,severing his spinal cord from his brain. The smell of Lee's last bowel movement permeates the air as Beefs skull makes contact with the concrete floor.



Neal sees the Kerrin boy fall. He is trying to make his way to him. The teams are still trying to find a place to sit. There aren't enough benches. Apparently Coach Bethany had come to this conclusion himself.He is directing  the kids that hadn't found a spot to find a piece of floor and plant it. Neal leans down to check on Kerrin when the smell of human waste hits him. There is another kid lying at a weird angle under the bench. Coach Bethany is barking orders to his team as he crosses the room to where Neal is now trying to shoo two other boys away from the immobile ones on the floor. One of the boys saw Lee.He starts yelling that Denison, the little one, was knocked the fuck out. Some of the other boys laugh.The Kerrin kid is coming to, the jolt strong enough to make him fuzzy for a second, not enough to keep him down. The kid had probably hit his head harder smacking those practice sleds around than he did on the floor.

Beef tries to sit up, his head is swimming.That will go away. It always does. Mr. Blattery is trying to get him to stay still, he might have a concussion. Beef has had concussions, they aren't that big of a deal. He waves Mr. Blattery off and shifts his body to sit with his back against the end of the bank of lockers. He looks down and finds Lee Denison staring back at him.His eyes are bulging. Blood is dripping off his lower lip, splattering on the metal feet of the bench. His head is resting at an unnatural angle against the legs. Beef has seen many dead cows. His dad is a butcher, that owns his own herd. That is the look of death. His stomach feels like it is flipped sideways.His eyes fiercely battle the white spots dancing around. It's too much, he is going to puke. He vomits his mom's famous biscuits and gravy all over the brand new uniform Coach had given him this afternoon. He looks up to apologize to Coach Bethany. He passes out again.









Three junior high kids on skateboards are crossing Dunbar Ave. It is 2 pm on a too sunny Wednesday in the middle of October.Dunbar is in a relatively quiet part of town.The only activity of any mention generally happens on the weekends. Sunday mostly, Saturday less often, and its always at the huge Zichen's Baptist church on the other end of the street.The one with the obnoxious 1 mile high beam of light blasting the wicked darkness into oblivion on its way to heaven, out of the roof. Ray Delbrea didn't notice the kids as he made his way to said church. Meatball or Seafood Delight, it was a tough call, and demanded his attention.

His cholesterol count had been high enough this time the doc thought it was a good idea to bring Carrie, Rays ever loving wife, in to the equation. How this was supposed to help save Ray from suffering a life ending heart attack was beyond him. The only meal she couldn't really monitor was lunch, and by damn, he was going to enjoy it. He is pulling into the parking lot of the holier than thou's when his radio lights up. It cackles like a robot with a serious case of late stage emphysema. He has to eat, whatever it is has to wait. He doesn't care if Jesus himself has got himself trapped in the dry well those kids had discovered while 'just taking a walk' out there in the development area for the new subdivision. The one that was supposed to bring the bright and shiny future to Zichen's Hill. The next time Carrie tried to feed him that 'organic' crap she called breakfast, he was filing for divorce. "What is it, Judy?" he says, fingering the send button on the radio "it better be more interesting than some cuss words on a shed." Of course, Brother Darrell was convinced these particular words, written on Gods own shed, on the property of Gods own House, were a travesty of the highest concern.And it could only have been perpetrated by the Devils own children. Ray was of the mind that it was probably the Mouthpiece for his Holiness' own two brats that had been responsible.

"We got somethin' goin on over at Hesters" Judie replies, silencing the terminal robot "seems there's a body his oldest found while messin' around in the creek." 

"Another doe?" Those damn deer where everywhere this year. The development had displaced a lot of the wildlife.The deer were becoming more than a nuisance.Bored kids with rifles were becoming criminals. And Officer Delbrea wasn't going to get lunch.

"Human, sir."