Jenny Plague-Bringer

Jenny Plague-Bringer - By Jl Bryan

Prologue

Ward Kilpatrick and his friends stalked the prissy glam boy as he left the broken sidewalk to squeeze through a ruptured chain-link fence into the abandoned railyard. The boy’s name was Joey Barrons, but Ward and his friends called him “JoJo” because he looked so girly. It bothered Ward just how girly JoJo sometimes looked. It made him want to grab the kid and just pound him. They’d been messing with him since sixth grade, and nothing had changed now that they’d started high school.

Ward watched through the rupture in the fence as JoJo cut across the abandoned rail yard, stepping around and through rusty old boxcars parked on the ruins of old tracks. It was a shortcut for JoJo to get home fast from the high school and off the garbage-filled streets of East St. Louis...but it wasn’t the safest path, as the glittery little hairsprayed freak was about to learn.

Ward nodded at his friend Lars, who was fifteen, Ward’s own age. Lars scurried to peel up the broken chain-link as if he were Ward’s personal butler. Ward walked under, followed by his other friend, Carl. Carl was a second-year freshman, sixteen years old.

JoJo was fourteen but looked twelve, what Ward’s father would have called a “faggy little pinko.” A huge fan of the newly elected President Reagan, Ward’s father, who had repeatedly referred to the recently ousted Jimmy Carter as a “lily-wristed pinko Commie.”

Ward and his friends were not faggy or pink. When the kids at school were listening to Roxy Music and David Bowie, Ward and pals slammed to hardcore bands that played parties in the city’s countless empty factories and warehouses. You didn’t need an ID to get in, because the shows weren’t legal in the first place. If there wasn’t a party, they usually played bootleg Black Flag cassettes on Carl’s ghetto blaster

The glam boy looked back over his shoulder, and his mouth popped open in an “O” shape that was almost cartoony. He wore glitter on his face—glitter, for God’s sake—trying to look like one of those weird English rock stars.

JoJo turned to run, but he had to cross a lot of gravel slag and two more dead rail lines littered with boxcar corpses before he could reach the fence on the far side of the yard.

“Don’t run!” Ward shouted, as he and his friends took off after JoJo. “Don’t run, little JoJo! You run like a girl!”

JoJo picked up speed, but his dark purple platform boots failed him. He staggered and fell, his wavy blond hair flaring out into a fluffy mane as his face hit the gravel. Ward and his two friends burst into laughter as they caught up with him.

“What do you want?” JoJo looked up at Ward. His lower lip was split open and bleeding, and it trembled. He was almost pouting like a baby.

“Why are you crying already?” Ward asked, folding his arms. “You don’t cry until I tell you to.”

“Yeah, nobody told you to cry yet,” Lars quickly agreed.

JoJo looked too scared to even try standing up. Ward’s heart pulsed a little faster. He was eager to get working on the kid.

JoJo was in their class at school. They were all freshmen, though Ward’s friend JoJo was.

Ward and his friends had a certain look, keeping their hair shaved close, with black denim jackets adorned with patches—skulls, flags, guns. Nobody f*cked with his crew, not for long.

“Okay, cough it up.” Ward kicked JoJo in the ribs. “Cash.”

“I don’t have any,” JoJo said. It was believable enough, considering the shitty half-boarded-up house where JoJo lived with his grandmother. It was just beyond the fence, in a neighborhood where half the houses were empty and collapsing, like all the neighborhoods in this part of East St. Louis.

“No money?” Ward smiled and dropped to a knee beside JoJo. “Then what are you going to give us, JoJo?”

“What do you want?” JoJo asked in a low whisper.

“I don’t know. You could suck Lars’ cock, couldn’t you? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Ward asked him, trying to sound cold and tough.

“What?” JoJo gasped.

“Lars, get over here and let him suck your cock,” Ward commanded. Lars stepped forward, grinning, pretending to unzip his fly. He stood there for a minute, smirking down at JoJo, and finally gave Ward an uncertain look, not sure how far he was supposed to carry the gag. Ward was amused watching both of them squirm, waiting for Ward’s next words.

“Well?” Ward said to JoJo. “Are you going to pay us in cash or suckage?”

“Do I have to?” JoJo squeaked, looking up at Lars’ husky, shaven-head form leering down at him.

“Do I have to?” Carl imitated, and Ward and Lars laughed. JoJo tried, pathetically, to laugh along as if he were in on the joke.

Ward seized JoJo’s face in both hands and glared into JoJo’s frightened, wet blue eyes (which were trimmed in eyeliner, for God’s sake!) Ward gave him a sly smile, and then he reached into JoJo’s brain.

He dug through a bunch of crap—shopping for records, helping his stupid female friends pick out make-up and hair products. Then he found useful tidbits—JoJo socking away spare coins, scrounged from lunches he’d chosen not to eat and the occasional gift of a dollar from his grandmother. He kept it all hidden in the box of an old watercolor set from childhood, which he stashed under his bed.

“Eighteen dollars and seventy-three cents,” Ward said. “You’ve got it hidden under your bed. You want to buy a ticket for Iggy Pop.” This set Ward’s two friends laughing.

“How did you know?” JoJo asked. Ward’s knowledge of his secrets seemed to scare him even more than the threat of getting his face bloodied, or sucking off Lars. “How can you know that?”

“Go fetch it for us, you little mutt,” Ward said. “All of it.”

“No!” JoJo’s face broke down, and he really did start to cry. “I’ve been saving it forever.”

“What did you say?” Ward grabbed JoJo’s blousy shirt and lifted him to his feet, and JoJo goggled up at him, shocked. “Did you say no?”

“That’s what he said!” Lars told him.

“I can’t, I need it,” JoJo whined.

“I can’t, I need it,” Carl imitated, which made Lars laugh.

Ward didn’t laugh, but instead drew back his fist and popped the little silky runt in the face. JoJo cried out as blood flung from his nose and splattered across a graffiti-covered train car. Ward let him stagger away a few steps, and then he pounced.

He punched JoJo in the stomach, doubling him over, then shoved him down to the gravel again. He kicked at JoJo’s ribs while the kid squirmed on the rocks. Lars and Carl joined in, slamming their heavy black boots into JoJo’s face and arms.

Ward dropped to his knees, straddling the bleeding, mewling little glam brat. He turned JoJo onto his stomach and laid his face across the nearest rotten chunk of old railroad track. JoJo struggled and squirmed, but Ward held him in place.

“I could have Carl bring his boot down, smash out all your teeth,” Ward whispered into JoJo’s ear, where a shiny blob of gold dangled from his pierced lobe. “Ever seen that happen before? They spray out like popcorn, pieces of tongue, blood all over. Is that what you want, kid?”

JoJo whimpered a “no.”

“So, tomorrow, you bring the cash to school. Eighteen dollars, seventy-three cents.” He petted JoJo’s pretty blond head. “And if you whine about it, we’ll break your fingers, one by one.” Ward had heard these threats in cheap gangster movies. “Do you understand me, JoJo?”

JoJo nodded, his eyes regarding Ward with naked fear. Ward winked at him and stood up. Carl and Lars both had fear in their eyes, too, after his calm, matter-of-fact threats to JoJo. Good. Let everyone fear him. Fear meant respect.

Ward turned and walked away without another word.

“See ya, glitter girl!” Lars shouted. He gave JoJo an extra kick in the stomach before following Ward and Carl out of the train yard.

Ward smiled to himself. Tomorrow, he and his buddies would each be six dollars richer. Ward believed in dividing the spoils evenly, because he wasn’t interested in spoils. He was interested in respect, loyalty, and fear. Even in this dirt-poor, rat-infested hell of a city, money was nothing compared to such things.