“Come,” X said over the phone, “now!” Then he hung up.
Usually we screened calls by letting the answering machine get them first. When I heard X’s voice, I ran and grabbed the phone.
“X, X, are you okay?” I was near panicking because I had never heard that sound to his voice before. “X?” But he was gone. No voice, no message. I grabbed my jacket, swung it onto my shoulders, and I was out the door. I grabbed X’s bike that he had left in my backyard and pedaled like there was fire growing behind me. He needed my help and I didn’t know how to let him down.
The bike was old. It was a ten speed before ten speeds knew how to be ten speeds. Big and blue with chipping paint and a big fat basket on the front. Everything rattled and squealed. I pedaled with every bit of strength I had and I fought with the straining workings of the bike to get speeds it was just not capable of.
The trip from my house to X’s was one mile, and it seemed a thousand and one. I slapped my left pocket.
No knife.
I slapped my right pocket.
No knife.
Whatever X was afraid of, me and him would have to face it without a blade. We had faced the odd and the difficult without knives before, but this was different. X had never yelled out for me like this before. I didn’t know what to expect, or even if he was at his house. I knew I could ask questions of his siblings when I got there if I couldn’t find him in his room, but he was notorious for leaving everyone out of his troubles but me. I pushed harder, finding no speed in the chain, the pedals, or the wheels, that wasn’t there already.
Cars buzzed past me. I was in the right-hand lane and I saw the oncoming traffic, but the cars coming up behind me beeped and blared their horns as they blazed past. I knew I was going to be run down way before I arrived at my destination.
I did arrive though, and as I came close, I saw his older brother carrying a bat, screaming his name. Anger and rage lived in that scream, and I kept pedaling as that brother was searching. I found the bushes out behind his house and dropped the bike there. I didn’t think I had been seen. I cursed, knowing X had pissed off at least his older brother. I made for the silo, the one place X said his family never looked for him. And I prayed that the entire thing didn’t come crashing down on us.
The silo had rusted parts and a crumbling ladder. The door at the bottom was usually stuck beyond fighting with, and the roof had caved in long ago. I hit the ladder, pulled myself up. I heard his older sister yelling for him as I climbed, and I knew X was in deep. He was in deep with the only people crazier than us. By the time I reached the top, I was exposed. I heard his other sister screaming his name with the voice of a siren, and I cursed.
I looked down through the cracks of the silo roof and saw him down there. He was crouched below the largest piece of the roof. All I could see was his bright blond hair and an arm gripping tight to shattered pieces of roof. I looked closer, saw two tiny legs sticking out of the tumbled mess, and I whisper-yelled, “X, hey X, what’s going on?”
His other brother screaming his name, and I knew his entire crew of siblings was searching for him. I knew all that needed to happen was one of them had to look up at this silo and I was caught. They would be waiting for me at the bottom of the ladder, and me without options.
I grabbed a piece of the crumbling stone before me, jerked it free. The rusted ladder whined and I tossed the stone at X. I tried to hit him. I knew he had pulled me into a terrible thing. Whatever his siblings were pissed about, he had dragged me in. I knew an ass kickin’ was coming for me. But I also knew there was nothing I could do about it. I was here now and I wasn’t leaving.
When the stone bounced off the roof bits an inch from his hand, he looked up at me and grinned.
Fuck him.
“What the fuck!” I hissed.
He motioned for the door. I made my way down the ladder as fast as I could. I could have been more careful. I could have used more caution, but I was exposed up here and I knew his siblings were at least as mean as us, maybe meaner.
He shoved the door open but it moved very little. I grabbed the door and it screamed rust on stone as he slipped out.
“What the fuck?”
He giggled.
“What the fuck did you get me into?”
“Come on, they’ll see us,” he whispered. We made for the barn and the unholy things to be found in it. Weeds and cat-o’-nine tails hid us for most of the run, but when we rushed around the lip of the building, we were exposed for a split second. That was all they needed.
“There!” a sibling yelled. “He is right there. He has Jesse with him!”
“Thanks, asshole. What happened?”
We looked around for any hiding spot and found one behind two old tractors that were way past saving. Here in this pile of odds and ends there was nothing that could be of any use to anyone. Boards with rusty nails in them. Plastic barrels that had no uses. Aluminum sidings stacked almost like bonfire wood, and a burned out car.
I grabbed the handle of the car and he hissed. “No, they will look there. We gotta hide.” I ducked into it anyway, and I knew I was fucked. The grime-covered windows had been wiped hastily clean ages before. This had been a hiding spot X had used before, and they would check here first.
I dropped low to the ground behind a stack of broken dressers. X laid himself flat behind a stack of cinder blocks. I could see his leg, and I knew his hiding place sucked. That was when four silhouettes filled the barn door. I froze. Each of them had a weapon of some sort. I groaned knowing that, whatever he had done, they were furious.
They began stalking the ruins that had once been treasures, useful objects made useless now from misuse or age. The inside of this barn was like some lost civilization. You could almost make sense of it, but you knew you didn’t have the whole story. It was the only thing we had now to hide in. And the people who were searching for us knew this land better than we did.
I needed to make it out of that car. The back seat was gone and the trunk was exposed. I crawled back there, praying I could open the trunk without trouble. Praying I could find a way to escape. I had been dragged into X’s designs. They would have no mercy on me.
Everything was sharp and rusted back there, and as I crawled, I skinned my knees and tore my pants. I was bleeding when I got to the trunk door and saw it was partially opened.
“Found you, you little fuck,” a sister said.
“No way you are getting out this time.” I heard splashing, and I slid out of the trunk and onto a gravel-covered pile of gas cans. I heard a scraping at my feet and cursed under my breath.
“You like piss?” his older sister snapped.
I didn’t. I didn’t like piss at all.
“Well, when we find you, we are going to hold you down and piss on you. We will make an example of your friend, too,” his sister shouted, and I hated everything about X in that moment.
“Do you see him, Jesse? Just tell us where he is and we will let you go.”
I heard the flick, snap, scrape of a zippo and I looked up, seeing that his brother had lit his stick on fire with a splash of gas. The fucker actually had a torch. What was this, some Warner Brothers Frankenstein movie?
“Give him up, Jesse,” I heard his older sister say. “This doesn’t have to go bad for you.”
I looked behind the cinder blocks and realized I couldn’t give him up even if I wanted to. My eyes scanned, then I saw him behind the RV, waving his hands in the shadows.
I dropped on my cut up knees and crawled, as his four siblings fanned out looking for him. When I got close, I stood up and grabbed him.
“I don’t like piss,” I whispered in his ear. “What the fuck did you do?”
I looked at him and saw his maniacal grin. He giggled, and in that moment, he looked like a child.
“They don’t like piss either,” he said. “Come on.”
He grabbed my jacket and I jerked it back. We skirted around the RV and to the side.
Now, that RV was parked in the barn nose-first, and we were at that nose. The door was almost pressed right up against the side wall. When we got there, he gently, very slowly, pulled the latch that would open the door. He worked it like a safe cracker, and I looked up at the windows, seeing they were covered with some sort of curtains. Maybe this would be a good hiding spot if we had shoved open the back door to make them think we had left the building, but as I looked over my shoulder, I could see it was slammed shut.
They knew we were in here and they knew we were not escaping. This barn was our fate. All I could do was slip into the door and pull it gently behind me.
Body parts.
The RV was empty in the front, but the back was covered in body parts. I stood staring at the tangled mess of mannequin parts stacked in the back.
“Come on,” He whispered.
“There is no escape now. They have us.”
He stared at me for a second and it dawned on him. Yes, they would eventually get to searching this spot. And no, we could not get out of here if we wanted to.
He dropped on his knees and crawled under the body parts. “Come on,” he said, and disappeared in the carnage.
I dropped to my knees and followed, ducking hands, feet, and torsos of mannequins as I went. I bumped into a few, and he hissed. “Quiet, you fucking idiot. They will hear you.”
I wove my way through the tight tunnel of body parts and got to the back, where a small empty space could be found.
“He has a torch,” I snapped as quietly as I could.
“Yeah, he is furious for sure,” X said with a giggle.
“What did you do?”
“I pissed in their shampoo,” he said giggling. “They all showered with it before they realized they smelled like a toilet.”
“Why? Why would you do that?”
“Not sure.” He cocked his head to the side. “Didn’t really think about it. It just sort of happened.”
“Why did you call me?” I asked. I heard more threats and taunts as his siblings worked their way through the barn, searching every inch. “Why bring me in this mess?”
He looked at me dumbfound for a moment before he sighed. “Don’t know.”
I punched him in the head. It hurt my hand and we both winced.
“You don’t know? You don’t fucking know?”
“Needed an extra set of fists, I guess.”
I sighed and looked at the door of the RV. I looked at the inevitable. “They are going to find us.”
“Yeah, probably,” he said.
“Then what?”
He grabbed a bent arm with stiff fingers at its end. “Then I figure…” He swung the arm as if it was a bat.
“Your brother has a torch.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But I doubt he will use it.”
“Fuck you,” I said as the door popped open and his sister’s blonde head popped in.
For the record, no matter how many mannequin parts you throw at piss-covered siblings, they will eventually get to you. No matter how you cuss and fight, they will eventually get ahold of you. When a girl only two years older than you, and very little bigger holds you down, you will be humiliated.
But not as humiliated as when an angry sister and a pissed off brother urinate on your face and in your hair.
The torch was not used for anything but intimidation, but it worked. With a piss-covered face you will start to doubt your life decisions.
But with a friend like X, you will never doubt your companions.
But you will get your ass beat, and they will piss in your hair.
Even though you are being urinated on, you will notice that X’s sister, when perched above you, does have a nice ass.
No, he won’t let you ride his bike home. You’ll have to walk. Walk in 4 degree weather, with wet ears and freezing hair.
I washed my jacket before school the next day.
X never apologized, or mentioned it again.
Neither did I.
It was the cost of doing business.
For more about the series Reality of the Unreal Mind, visit Amazon.
Jesse Teller 
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