just?

Disclaimer: The following short story has an unusual structure. This is done on purpose. It has a tense shift. This is also done on purpose.


It was night now and the moon was full. Hanging there in the sky bright and pearl, silvering the tops of clouds that floated aimlessly near it. Sen was drunk. Well, Sen was mellow, a half-full can of Jim Beam and cola in his hand, his fourth for the night. He had a stupid grin plastered across his face and his eyes half closed. He was in love, well, as he defined it anyway, with a porn star he had just seen on the internet. The truth was Sen fell in love with every pretty girl he saw and it seemed that this happened more when he was inebriated. Another thing that happened when he was inebriated was the appearance of his friend Harry. Sen was always a little surprised when Harry turned up but never disappointed. Sen was watching the stars with the level of fascination that can only be induced by alcohol, stroking all the while the small triangular tuft of hair under his bottom lip and dreaming of women when he heard Harry’s familiar voice.

“I need your help again.”

The fold out chair he was sitting on made an odd creaking sound as he shifted his weight in it to turn and face his friend. Harry’s shoulder-length dark hair danced subtly in the warm summers night breeze and his normally pale face was tinted orange with the light from the street lamp out the front of the house. Sen’s gaze dropped down to the open can of JB’s in Harry’s hand.

“Is that the last one?” he slurred.

“You’ve got three left,” Harry replied and Sen giggled quietly, closed his eyes and rolled his heavy head back to rest on the top of the backrest of his chair.

“You’ve cut your lawn, haven’t you.” Harry said conversationally.

That was the other thing that Sen did when he was drunk, or more precisely, as he got drunk. He crawled around his back yard lawn, a beer in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other, stopping every now and then to stare at the moon, maybe howl at it; that always amused him. Mainly because it got all the dogs in the neighborhood howling and it pissed off everyone.

“Mhmm, now, who do you need my help with.” When Sen burped it tasted like sausage; poor-man’s food.

“You’re favourite, go get your camera.”

“We’re going now?”

Harry nodded. Sen stood up, took a few moments to suppress the urge to purge and arched his stiff back.

“Hold on a moment,” he mumbled as he padded bare-foot across the paved section of his back yard towards his house.

“I gotta turn my sprinklers on..”

The sprinklers slid out of the ground with that cool hollow popping sound and cast a hissing mist across the lawn.

“I’ll wait out front,” said Harry.

Sen stumbled through the sliding door, shut it behind him and made his clumsy way to his bedroom. He passed a mirror on the way and stopped to stare at the strange-looking drunk boy staring back at him. He still considered himself a boy despite the fact he was now twenty-two. The boy needed a haircut. He normally wore his hair in the same length all over, pretty short but it was starting to look a bit shaggy. His dark caramel-brown eyes, now blood-shot and slightly glazed over wandered lazily under his thick eyebrows and his large-lipped, almost feminine mouth hung open in alcoholic stupor.

“You ain’t so ugly now, you stupid mother-fucker,” he said and pushed himself off down the short passage-way to his room.

When Sen finally made it out the front door with a backpack containing his three remaining JB’s and a digital camera (amongst other things) slung low on his back, he found Harry sitting on his brick mailbox, smoking.

“Oh, yeah,” said Sen, “I could go one of them,” and he reached behind him and fumbled with one of the outer pockets of his backpack. He watched the tip of Harry’s cigarette glow bright as Harry took a long drag and he pulled a pack out from his bag. He removed a cancer-stick and his lighter from the pack and lit up. Harry watched him expectantly with a sly smirk on his face. Sen held it in for as long as he could but Harry still heard the muted cough when it finally came out.

“Pussy,” he said, “ come on, let’s go.”

And so they walked. The moonlight filtered down through the leaves of the trees that lined the side walk, mottling Sen and Harry with abstract shadowy patterns. The summery breeze still flowed gently though them, rippling Sen’s light, cotton shirt across his chest and conducting the trees in some hissing arboreal chorale. Sen added his own part when he cracked open another can of bourbon and coke. He was starting to sober up and he never liked that much. He did, however, like helping Harry out, partly because it involved getting pissed first. As the nuts, or whatever the hell they were, that fell from the trees crunched under foot, Sen tried to remember, as he had many times before, when he had first met Harry. If he ever mentioned this to Harry he would be told to ‘shut the fuck up, you girly-ass mother-fucker’ and rightly so, thought Sen. The fact of the matter was that whenever Sen tried to remember his first meeting with Harry, he would always come to this same conclusion.

Harry glanced across at his companion, noticing the blank, distant expression on his stubbly face.

“What girly thoughts, pray-tell, are you thinking of now, you stupid fat fuck?” he said affectionately.

A sheepish grin stretched across Sen’s face.

“Shut the fuck up.”

Harry grinned back.

“Never mind that now, we’re here.”

The house was small and glazed in muted blues and grays from the shadows of the large trees surrounding it. There was a soft scraping sound, almost like the sound of foot steps in wet sand. It was the sound of leaves of an overhanging branch brushing lightly on the black tiles of the roof. The lawn glistened as if thousands of diamonds had been cast carelessly upon it, it had just been watered. There were no lights on in the house, at least none that could be seen from the two large windows visible from the walk way outside. Sen guessed that one window was the living room and the other was the master bedroom. The house was only likely to have two bedrooms and the master wouldn’t be very big anyway. Sen had a quick look in the letter box: nothing, (he’d have to come back some time later) then reached down and unzipped his fly and proceeded to relieve himself on the rusty, waist-high chain-link fence that surrounded the front yard. This was partly because he needed to but also to lubricate the hinges to stop it from creaking when he went through it. He couldn’t remember where he picked up the trick from but he knew that ninjas used to do it. Couldn’t imagine why though, didn’t feudal Japanese houses only have those sliding paper doors? It was not important now anyway.

The gate swung silently into the yard and Sen stole a quick glance up and down the street for any witnesses before he made his stealthy way up the cracked paving of the walkway. He took slow, deliberate strides, seven in all before he reached the two steps that took him up to the concrete patio. When he got to the door he sat on his haunches, quietly pulled his pack off his shoulders and retrieved a homemade lock-pick from the front pocket. The fly screen opened quietly enough and Sen placed himself between it and the door frame, the gas powered closing mechanism pushed it against his knee. The warm breeze carried a few dry leaves, scraping noisily across the patio and the crickets sang rhythmically to each other but Sen didn’t hear any of it as pushed the thin piece of metal into the keyway. That part was always satisfying, that muted click-click-click-click as the tip of the pick danced under the lock’s pins. He could see this happening in his mind’s eye. Next, Sen inserted the small modified allen key into the bottom of the keyway and pulled on the locks cylinder, forcing it to rotate slightly in one direction. He closed his eyes and a picture of the lock mechanism formed in his head as he began scrubbing the pins. This was a skill that took him a long time to learn and frustrated him to no end when he started out but few things bring you the sort of simple joy you get when you see, hear and feel that tiny ‘tik’ as a pin sets. After about two and a half minutes (he was still an amateur) the cylinder gave and Sen grabbed the door knob and turned it at the same time as he turned the cylinder. Not too far or the button will pop out on the knob on the other side of the door and it would sound like an explosion in the relative quiet of the night. Just turn it enough to push the door open. As soon as the door opened enough Sen quickly reached through the crack and held the button then let it out gently after he turned the knob all the way to release it.

Sen turned back to the street to give Harry a thumbs-up but, as usual, Harry had already disappeared.

Piker.

After closing the door as gently as he could once he was inside, Sen crouched down and looked around. His eyes would take a little while to adjust to the slighly darker interior. His ears, however, needing no such re-tuning, heard the soft wet sobs, heard the red lust grunts, heard the rhythm, the fuck-rhythm, the rape-rhythm. Sen unzipped his bag as quietly as he could and retrieved his camera. He turned it on and switched it to night-vision.

Then he stood up, although, apparently too fast and he had to quickly lean against the wall. He closed his eyes and swallowed a rather large lump in his throat, feeling the sweat pinprick out of the skin on his forehead. For a few seconds it felt like his stomach was trying to lurch it’s way up his esophagus, jabbing violently headwards. A whole starscape formed behind his now clenched shut eyelids swirling and pulsating back and forth in time with the pounding in his skull and in his ears. Deep breaths, now, deep breaths through grinding teeth. The sweat now became heavy, salty beads scaling down his grimacing face and across his lips but his stomach was settling now. That was just a tremor, the main quake was yet to come. Sen stood leaning against the wall slowly returning his breathing to normal. When he opened his eyes he waited till the stars faded out and left his bag by the door while he went towards the rhythm.

As he went down the short passage way the rhythm beat louder. He nostrils filled with the rank odor of a large man’s sweat. Sen always felt something primal, something animal stir in him when he picked up the scent of another human. He could feel his lips twitching apart into a smile, or maybe he was just baring his teeth, he was never sure. A wedge of soft light painting the carpet and the opposite wall spilled from the crack in the doorway, this was the point of no return. Sen held his camera out in front of him, still standing in the shadow, the fold out screen showing an image of the door rendered in shades of green. The picture rose and fell slightly with each inhalation and exhalation. One breath. Two breaths. Three … he sidestepped into the cone of light, the whole time his eyes never strayed from that little screen. The image changed, the door sliding to the left, the picture getting lighter as the lens was aimed closer and ever closer to the opening…whiteout. Wait. The briefest of pauses, Sen knows, can almost see in his mind the iris of the camera contracting. The picture will reappear…wait…here it is. The screen darkens and the picture forms.

The girl has a hand clamped over mouth, at the same time trapping some strands of her hair, pulled in lines across her soft face. Her head is turned on it’s left side so she is staring straight through the crack in the doorway and her face glistens wet in the harsh street light pouring through the thin curtains. Beneath her sweaty, furroughed brow her bleary eyes widen as she sees him. Sen’s own eyes lift from the screen and stare naked into hers and he can not turn back now no matter what.

He pushes the door open carefully (he learnt not to kick it open from one occasion when it bounced off something and swung back closed in his face) and enters the room panning the camera right to left. There's some blood on the bed. Sen continues to pan. He stops on the man who still seems oblivious to Sen’s appearance, dancing his evil dance. His eyes are squeezed shut and his top lip is pulled back showing his teeth biting on his bottom lip. The camera sees him in profile but Sen needs his whole face. He advances and the naked, shiny man suddenly turns, surprised, his face fills the camera’s screen. That’s the money shot, Sen thinks and almost chuckles to himself as he gives the off balance rapist a hearty shove into the nearest wall and tosses the camera onto the bed. The man winces with the impact and the room reverberates with the sound of it. The girl doesn’t need to be told to leave, she snatches her jeans from the floor and flashes past out the door.

This man is bigger than Sen and he is now grateful for his drinking. The fist connects with Sen’s cheek with a flat pak and he swears he can feel each individual knuckle grinding into his gums. The shock of the hit rumbles in his skull but as he reels groundwards he is glad that it missed his cheekbone because that would really hurt. Sen gets up just in time to cop another blow in the teeth and he goes down again, blood and spit dribble out the corner of his mouth and he is overwhelmed with the warm tang assaulting his taste buds. As he hits the ground his head strikes the sharp edge of something and now he has an oozing red line across his forehead. Good. Through the explosive pulses of blood in his ears he can hear the man spitting obscenities at him and ordering him to get up. As he stumbles to his feet he is kicked violently into a bookcase, his head going through the second shelf mostly stacked with magazines. Good thing this guy isn’t a big reader. Despite the soft reading material Sen still feels a numbness spread along his orbital bone which will no doubt soon turn into a slicing pain as the eye turns black. Sen starts to laugh. He’s getting the shit kicked out of him and he’s loving it. You don’t feel alive unless there’s a good chance you could die. He smears the blood from his brow across his swelling face and turns to face the approaching rapist and grins savagely knowing that his teeth are coated in blood glistening in dark lines between adjacent incisors and molars and canines. The man starts for an instant, shock registering on his face before it screws up in a snarl as he reigns in another blow, this time into Sen’s ribcage. Having the wind knocked out of him changes the pitch of Sen’s laughter for a second but it doesn’t letup. There’s few things these type of people hate more than being laughed at, especially when they think they’re doing their best to hurt you. At that Sen laughs harder. Another blow, the ribs on the other side now, Sen takes a little longer to recover this time but keeps on laughing. He sees the rapist pull his fist back and it is obvious this next one is going in the gut.

Here comes the fun part.

Sen tenses his abdominal muscles and the fist slams into his stomach. The immediate feeling is one of warmth and Sen can feel the chunky acidic brew that is his stomach contents force it’s way back up the digestive tract. His abs are now spasming uncontrollably like some vile organic pump and his jaw drops and his tongue lolls out. The vomit is burning the back of his throat and rising. The rapist looks up into Sen’s face with empty eyes and a wicked smile, it appears he has silenced the laughter. The vomit flows past the tonsils, past the epiglottis, past the molars and finally and terribly out of Sen’s open, bloodied mouth. The rapist’s empty eyes now fill with horror as the hot, yellow stream of spew splashes onto his naked chest, splashes onto his naked genitals and splashes into his disgusted face. He stands mute like a statue for a moment before his dripping face cracks into an expression of rage. It is now that Sen’s knee comes up with all the crushing force he can muster into the rapist’s groin. The reason why Sen is so good at these little confrontations is that he fights very dirty.

The rapist doubles over and a fine spray of saliva explodes from his mouth in a gasp of agony. Sen’s right arm arcs in an uncheckable swing, a dead-weight club of meat and the fist on the end cracks hard into the rapists head sending the man tumbling onto his belly. He is struggling to get to his knees. Sen kicks him hard between the legs again and the rapist collapses like a puppet whose strings have been suddenly cut. He lays on the floor breathing heavily, eyes screwed shut with large drops of sweat coursing across his face. Sen leaves the room, the rapist hears the sharp hissing of his retreating footsteps on the carpet.

He tries to get up but his guts stretch, squeeze and twist into a walnut and he involuntarily snaps into the fetal position, drawing ragged breathes through his teeth. If the blood wasn’t flooding through his eardrums he might have heard his assailant return. But it is and he doesn’t. He does, however, feel his feet being bound, none too gently either, with a thick tape. The rushing in his ears dies down enough for him to hear the ripping as the tape comes off the roll and goes tightly around his ankles four more times. The kid lets go of his ankles to tear the tape and he tries to push the pain in his groin to the back of his mind. He quickly flips himself onto his right side and lashes out with his hands, desperately trying to find a shirt or hair or arms to pull his attacker closer. His arms are batted away and an intense, fiery pain lances through his chest and shoulder where the kid his digging his fingers into some unseen pressure point around the collarbone. There are tears in his eyes now and he is scared that his teeth will shatter into white, splintery shards from being jammed together so forcefully. The kid removes his fingers and the pain decreases dramatically but his relief is short-lived. A fist jack-hammers into his solar plexus and any idea of a fight goes out of him. He can feel himself being rolled onto his stomach and his arms manipulated behind him somewhere far away in the darkness. His fingers are being curled into fists with the thumbs inside and taped up in that position. His arms are folded up behind his back so that his wrists are placed between the blades of his shoulders. Now comes the tape binding his wrists. Round and round and round so many times he loses count. Finally, the kid is finished and he is thrown roughly onto his back, well, arms, really and dragged towards the door.

The carpet is burning his naked ass and forearms as he is plowed out of his room. He sees the kid go out the door clutching his taped ankles under an arm, sees him disappear around the corner and it now obvious that this course includes a quick rendezvous between head and door frame. The impact isn’t that great but it’s enough given his already battered condition and his last feeling before losing consciousness is one of relief.

“You know I’ve got you on camera, don’t you, Paul? Yeah, I found some of your mail so I know your name now. I can also find that girl again. I’ve got a friend who’s good at that sort of thing. How old was she, anyway? 13? 14? Well, you know what? I don’t think she would mind reporting this incident to the police. Got good evidence against you, it’s likely you’ll go to jail. Don’t worry, it’ll only be for a few years. That’s the way it works now. Pretty lenient, I think. In fact, I think rape is the most heinous, vile, repulsive act that a human being can possibly commit against another human being. It’s disgusting. I say: bring back the days of corporal punishment. I say: castration is surely a much better penalty than prison. Wouldn’t you? The trouble is that although you would be unable to hurt anybody in that way again, the defective person who is capable of this atrocity is still alive. Who’s to say you won’t find some other way to hurt someone. The only way to be sure is to kill you…quit your whining, I’m not going to kill you. No, you see, even that seems like the easy way out for you. I don’t know what I should do to you, maybe I should just leave you here and let the cops sort you out. Say, this is nice kitchen by the way but where do you keep all your frying pans? I couldn't find them. Oh well, I can make do, I guess. But back to the subject at hand. Maybe I should castrate you…but I don’t really want to touch your balls. No, I want to do something that would cause a lasting impression on you. Some deep psychological trauma. Something that would give you nightmares for the rest of your pathetic existence. Maybe if I knew you better I would know what you were afraid of. But I don’t want to get to know you because you’re a rapist. You’re a creature that forces itself onto those weaker than you, those who can’t defend themselves against you, I mean, look at you, dude, you’re cut. You bully them so that you can orgasm. You cause so much lasting pain for five seconds of pleasure. Why don’t you just jack off? I mean, at least a murderer’s victim gets to be dead, right? What you do is just the most selfish act in the world. But I digress. The point I’m trying to make is I want you to suffer the rest of your life like how your victims will, but what to do, what to do? You know what? What have people been afraid of since the dawn of time? I’ll tell you what. Lions, tigers, sharks, whatever other big carnivores there are. Why? Because people are terrified of being eaten. Ah, you should have seen how big your eyes just went.”

Paul’s throat is raw from trying to scream through the tape covering his mouth; he doesn’t want to die. A searing pain flares out from his stomach as teeth puncture the flesh there. Sen only feels the rubbery resistance dissolve suddenly as teeth puncture the flesh there. His jaw snaps shut and thick and warm blood runs over his lips. He turns to see Paul’s face. Paul’s face feels like it is carved out of stone, he can not move a muscle in it. It is frozen in a pathetic look of a man begging for his life. Paul sees through squinted eyes his devourer. The eyes are so dark they are almost black but they are sparkling humorously. There is a cut above the kid's eyebrow and from it there is a shiny red trail of coagulated blood running down his swollen face where it disappears into the brighter mask of Paul's own blood dripping from the maw of this creature above him.

The human carrion shakes and whimpers and his last thought before blacking out again is that now he hopes he does die. As Sen buries his head in the gut of his prey, his jaw working like some vicious machine, he is hoping for the opposite.