Bad Games

11



Arty was nursing a beer when Jim entered the bar. It was nearly 2:00 a.m., and in this particular dive that meant the remaining patrons were still around for two reasons: sex or a fight. Or both. Arty was the exception. He was waiting for his brother to arrive so he could find out how his solo venture at Crescent Lake had gone.

“It’s about time,” Arty said as his brother took a stool next to him. “Any problems?”

“Nah—I wore the socks like you said. No serious prints or anything. My feet hurt though.”

“Can’t make an omelet.”

“Yeah.”

Patrick slid a bottle of beer over to his brother. “It might be a little warm. I didn’t think you’d be this late.”

Jim took the beer and sipped it. “It’s fine.” He took another swig. “I planned on getting here sooner, but I was enjoying myself a bit too much I suppose.”

Arty laughed and sipped from his own beer. “Tomorrow’s going to be a good day.”

Jim looked off into one of his thoughts for a moment, a smile on his face that managed both malice and delight. When he returned he quivered and shook his head hard as if trying to wake himself up. “I think I need a shot. You want one?”

“No, let’s get out of here. There’s some big inbred f*ckers at the end of the bar who were giving me shit earlier.”

Jim looked past his brother, down the length of the bar. Three big men stared back with drunken, arrogant smirks. Two slovenly women accompanied them.

“Those big hicks? What’d they do?”

“Just said some shit. Took some cheap shots because I was on my own. Thought I was an easy victim. Trying to impress those pigs with them I guess.”

Jim was adamant. He continued to stare at the three men as he spoke to his brother. “Well f*ck them—I’m not leaving because those hillbillies are looking to start something. Let them f*cking try.”

Arty put his hand on his brother’s forearm. It was as solid as a baseball bat from the angry grip he had on his beer. “We don’t want to draw any attention to ourselves, bro. Two guys from out of town fighting with locals will put a beacon on our backs. It’s nearly closing time—let’s just let it go and leave.”

Jim watched the three men lean in and whisper to one another. The shift in their body language said it all. “They’re not gonna let us leave here without a fight, Arty.”

Arty glanced down the end of the bar and saw exactly what his brother saw. The three men were fidgeting, psyching themselves up. “Well if it comes to that I’ve got a back up plan I took care of earlier.”

“What plan?”

Arty didn’t answer; his attention was now locked on the three men approaching them. The largest of the three took lead with the remaining two close behind. The leader stood well over six feet and carried significant bulk. His torso was covered in flannel and his thick legs were wrapped in faded denim that ended with a pair of giant construction boots. His greasy hair was long, tangled, and ink black.

“So your girl finally showed up, huh?” the leader asked Arty, his two friends standing behind him, arms folded, grinning at the insult. They were both shorter than the leader but carried similar girth and attire. The one on the left was slick bald with a scar running through his left eyebrow. The one on the right sported the same greasy black hair as the leader in addition to a heavy goatee.

Jim went to stand up, but Arty grabbed his shoulder and guided him back down onto the stool. “We were just on our way out,” Arty said.

“No, not yet you’re not,” the leader said. He gulped the last of his beer then slammed the empty bottle down onto the bar.

That was when Arty and Jim first spotted the ring. It was silver and huge and practically engulfed the man’s thick ring finger. A skull was engraved into it.

“Before you leave I’d like you to buy us all a couple of rounds.” The man motioned to his friends on either side of him, then to the giggling girls at the end of the bar who seemed to be enjoying every second of the show.

“We’re not buying you a round,” Jim said.

“No?” the leader said. “Why not?” He extended his arm and knocked over Arty’s beer, the remains gradually pumping their way out through the brown neck of the bottle, spreading into a small pool on the counter, then finally a slow drip over the edge of the bar.

Arty glanced down at his spilt beer then looked straight ahead. He had a strange calm over him that didn’t seem to fit under the given circumstances. The leader seemed to sense this too; a look of both confusion and anger meshed on his thick brow. The man inched closer, made a tight fist, rested it on the bar so that both brothers could swoon over it in all its destructive glory.

“Nice ring,” Arty said without even looking at it. He was still staring straight ahead, still inappropriately cool. “Very original.”

The leader’s brow furrowed some more. Arty’s sarcasm would have been evident to most, but to this man it proved cumbersome. His response was primitive: he opened his fist and closed it again, tighter this time, the skull ring jutting forward like an extra silver knuckle.

A moment followed where no one spoke. A country song was crooning from the speakers overhead. The bartender—who seemed content to keep his back to the affair—clinked and clanked an array of glasses in the square tub of blue liquid next to the bar’s sink. The drunken gibberish from the remaining patrons—all aging, defeated men, oblivious to anything around them but the unfair world—periodically rose over the country singer’s voice whenever they made frustrated, incoherent shouts to all that might listen.

“Oh for f*ck’s sake!” Jim finally blurted, kicking back his stool. “You know what? We will buy you some drinks. In fact we’ll buy you lots of drinks. You know why? Because the way I see it, you’re gonna need some thick f*cking beer goggles in order to f*ck those two pigs you got over there.”

The leader didn’t hesitate. He pummeled his right fist deep into Arty’s cheekbone, the sound like a mallet cracking meat. The silver ring cut deep into Arty’s flesh and sent him reeling backwards into his brother. Jim caught Arty and quickly tried standing him upright, but Arty’s legs were gone from the punch, buckling in all directions every time his feet touched the floor.

Jim opted to drag Arty backward to place him into one of the booths so he could free up his hands for an attack. Arty, however, proved coherent enough to sense what his brother was attempting to do and turned into him.

“No! Jim, no!” Arty yelled, gripping his brother’s shoulders, stopping his momentum.

“Yeah, Jim,” the leader laughed, “listen to your girl.”

“F*ck you, you f*cking inbred hick!” Jim spat over Arty’s shoulder.

The leader stepped forward and Arty pushed Jim back towards the door. “We’re leaving,” Arty said.

The three men were all laughing in unison now. And as Arty gave Jim one final push out the door, he turned over his shoulder and locked eyes with the big man with the silver skull ring. Arty smirked, winked, and was gone. And the big man with the silver skull ring instantly stopped laughing.



* * *



3:00 a.m. A battered Ford pickup pulled into an unpaved driveway five miles from the watering hole at which it was recently parked. Loose pebbles crunched beneath the heavy tires before the truck eventually grinded to a stop.

A large man wearing a big silver ring nearly fell out of the driver’s side. He righted himself, belched loud, then slammed the car door shut before stumbling around the rear of his truck towards the passenger side. The passenger door flung open and a hefty woman reeking of booze and cigarettes fell into his arms, letting out an obnoxious giggle that culminated with a snort. The two instantly locked lips and exchanged a sloppy kiss that missed more than it connected.

The large man wrapped his arm around the staggering girl and guided her along the short, broken path to the front door of his one-story home—a dwelling that would be aptly described by any passerby as a weather-stained box with a few windows.

Before entering, the drunken couple paused for a second attempt at a kiss, nearly falling over one another in the effort. The alcohol-induced detriment to their equilibrium succeeded in bringing out another sloppy giggle from the female. The big man leered at his drunken catch then turned back towards the front door. He closed one eye (there were now two doorknobs for some reason) and fumbled and scraped his key along the lock’s plate until it eventually clicked home. A quick turn of the key, a forceful nudge with his shoulder, and the front door swung open allowing the big man to guide his catch inside. That was the last thing the big man remembered for almost thirty minutes.



* * *



The big man felt the headache before his eyes fluttered open. When his vision settled, he made out two men standing in front of him. It took him a few seconds, but he soon remembered who these two men were. One of the men was sporting an impressive wound on his cheek—a wound that he himself had given him.

The large man sprang to attention, but instant resistance seized his entire body, the confines of the ropes that bound him to the chair biting into his skin. He struggled briefly against the binds, but soon quit when he could not detect even the slightest bit of slack in their coiled grip.

“Careless fool,” the man with the wound on his cheek said. “You left your wallet open for damn near five minutes when you bought a round for that pig you brought home with you.”

The big man blinked several times; nothing this man was saying made any sense. His head ached at its base from where he had been struck upon entering his home, and the more he thought, the more it ached. He went to speak against the wadded cloth that was taped inside his mouth, but only panicked, muffled words escaped.

“Your license, genius,” the man with the welt said. “It was sticking out of your wallet like a hard-on. Meatheads like you are so f*cking predictable. I knew you’d eventually start trouble with us tonight. I guess you can say I like to plan ahead.”

The large man’s eyes stopped blinking. He understood now. He struggled again for a brief moment—more a show of bravado than any attempt at escape—and then stopped. He tried another muffled shout, but its futility was heightened more by the pain the effort was causing his head. He resigned entirely and his shoulders slumped, a long strained sigh flapped out of his nose like a snore.

“Now,” the man with the welt said. “How ’bout we get a look at that ring of yours? I mean it’s such a cool ring after all. A skull. It’s just so rebellious and dangerous. Scary even. You must be a real outlaw to wear a ring like that, yeah?”

The man with the welt’s accomplice, a stocky man with black eyes and a shaved head, stepped forward, past the man with the welt. He squatted down into a catcher’s stance so he could study the ring on the big man’s hand that was strapped to the arm of the chair. “This is cool,” the man with the shaved head said as he fingered the ring. He looked over his shoulder at the man with the welt. “Very scary.”

“Well I can’t see it too well from back here,” the man with the welt said. “Can you bring it over to me?”

“I can try.” The man with the shaved head put on a melodramatic display as he grunted and groaned, trying (but not trying) to remove the ring from the man’s thick fingers. “Won’t budge, bro,” he said. “It’s stuck fast.”

The man with the welt continued in the vein of his friend’s theatrics with an exaggerated frown and sigh. Taking a few steps forward, he squatted down next to the man with the shaved head. “Let me have a try,” he said.

The man with the welt took hold of the large man’s ring finger and violently jerked it to its left. There was an exceptional crack like a branch being snapped in two. The large man cried out through his gag, the cloth muffling the sound but not the intensity.

“Did that get it?” the man with the shaved head asked.

“Nope. Still on there,” the man with the welt replied.

“Better try again.”

The man with the welt took hold of the broken finger and now jerked it to its right. No crack this time, just a grinding noise like popcorn kernels being munched. The large man’s cries were long drawn-out moans now, the pain shockingly worse than before.

“Anything?” the man with the shaved head asked.

“Still nothing,” the man with the welt complained.

The man with the shaved head huffed, stood up, and exited the room. He returned moments later carrying a large kitchen knife, a good portion of it coated in dark, wet red. The big man’s eyes widened when he saw the bloodied knife.

“Ah, don’t worry about her, big fella,” the man with the shaved head said. He looked at the knife as he spoke, rotating it back and forth in his hand, studying it. “We made it fairly quick. Still, a pig like that’s gonna take a lot of sticking before she eventually stops squealing, yeah?” He laughed and shook his head without a trace of sympathy. “Poor fat slut was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The man with the shaved head handed the kitchen knife down to the man with the welt who was still squatting in front of the big man, his calm, almost lazy eyes never leaving the big man’s panicked, unblinking pair. His confident smirk never waning. The same confident smirk he’d flashed at the large man before exiting the bar after the fight. Admittedly, that smirk had caused the large man a brief hint of concern as they left the scene. Now it terrified him.

“Okay,” the man with the welt announced. He took firm hold of the twisted ring finger in one hand, and tapped the flat of the blade against the big man’s forehead with the other, clucking his tongue with each tap like a metronome. “Let’s see if we can’t get that scary ring off once and for all.”