Past Blasts Vol II: The Monster

I had a monster who antagonized me as a tweener. I'll call him Frank. Oddly enough that was his human name. Although I am sure you could only bind him to your will if you used his demonic name. I never learned that name, and thus, I could never get the upper hand on this guy.

Let me back up. This is another Past Blast, and I'm delving into a time in my life where I got attacked regularly by the Monster.I don't think it was every day, and I don't mean that I was savagely beaten. He knew to do enough damage to me to make me sometimes cry, and no more. He gave me as much misery as he could get away with. Or he tried to, sometimes he crossed the line and got caught and sent to the principals office. He knew if he ever left a scar, I would have undeniable proof and would be forced to rat on him. He knew if he ever hurt me too badly, I would probably turn him in regardless of the consequences. Plus, he told me if I told on him, he would beat me severely. One look into his demonic eyes and I believed him. So he did what he could, and he enjoyed every moment of it. I mean this kid really enjoyed his work. He knew I would never tell on him, when he got caught it was because he got careless and a teacher saw something.

So, he would slam me into the lockers, throw my books down the hall, punch me in the gut, whatever he could think of, all the time singing to me in a sing song voice about how he wanted to kill me some day. It was not only painful but unnerving. His childlike singing, his blank expression, his beady eyes, his massive serial killer bulk. I was picked on by a lot of kids, but this one was the only one that really chilled me because he didn't seem like a human being. Nothing stopped him.

Frank's attacks became so common, though, that in spite of all this I started to build up a resistance. I took them but they stopped scaring me and instead annoyed me. I started fighting back in small ways that got larger and larger because nothing stopped him and nothing made him mad. So why not fight back? It didn't matter either way. He would just keep up the assault until he had to stop (saw a teacher coming or the bell rang).

One day in the hall I was talking to my friend Mike (not the Mike from the other Past Blast, I knew about 10 Mikes it seems) and I was trying to be a tough kid and Frank attacked me and I managed to twist and slam him into a locker. I could tell it really hurt him, maybe he hit his funny bone or something, but he was in pain. His eyes had teared up. And he just laughed softly as he sort of loped down the hall. I guess it was close enough to class time that he knew not to engage me any more. I remember Mike saying "he's going to really beat you up for that one." But he didn't change it up at all, it went on the same exact way it always was.

Another time I remember stabbing scissors at his hand during an arts and crafts time and scraping off some serious skin off his palm somehow, maybe causing a small cut too. Was he lucky I didn't stab him through the hand (I know I meant to) or was I lucky (he might have killed me)? I remember he spent the rest of the time, when the teacher was busy looking somewhere else, trying to get the scissors out of my hands saying he was going to stab me in the chest. I was quite panicky for the duration of that. Since I had kinda stabbed him. I thought he might mean it. Needless to say I didn't let him get those scissors, but he made me bang up my fingers pretty badly in the struggle.

The time that sticks out in my head though is one day during recess. I would always hang on the fringe so the other kids wouldn't pick on me, and my friends would come visit when it was cool for them (if they spent too much time with me, they would have been considered losers too. ah the joy of youth!).

Frank came over and started poking me in the ribs painfully. And singing, and pulling on my hair, and pushing me down, and laughing, and singing, and pretty much prancing around me like a ballet dancer. With his beady eyes and his expressionless face.

I snapped. I grabbed a big rock and held it out so he knew I had it, and he sang a song. something like "johnny is afraid, he is afraid to hit me with the rock, because if he hits me with the rock i am going to kill him, i am going to kill him anyways, johnny is afraid..."

He lunged in and I swung the rock as hard as I could, it missed him. He laughed, surprised, continued his song, and added lyrics like "johnny is lucky he didn't hit me." He came in again. This happened a few times. Finally I cut loose again and with all my might swung the rock. And hit him right in the head.

"Hit" as in a square smash dead on into his skull. I heard the crack. I felt the crack. The force of the blow made me stumble back and fall down backwards. I swear I split his skull. I know I didn't actually split his skull, brains didn't fly out and his head didn't come apart like an egg, but at that moment I thought I split his head wide open. I was gripped in total fear, did I kill him? I remember the thought of "I killed someone!" racing through my head. I don't remember if my eyes were shut but I remember either opening them or maybe pushing hair out of my eyes and seeing him sitting on a large rock, looking at me, slightly confused, with blood streaming down his face from the hit. Not a gusher of blood, more like 2 or 3 lines of blood, but what stuck out at me was the fact that one of the lines of blood was going right into his left eye. And that was confusing him. He finally figured out what was happening and wiped his eye and licked his hand, and he looked up. And he fucking SMILED at me. And he GIGGLED. He got up and started dancing around me again, pushing his bloody hand in my face, singing about killing me (nothing new there) but also giggling as he sang. A teacher came up finally and grabbed him.

That was the common daily ritual. Once a teacher saw Frank antagonizing me, the teacher would come over and save me and Frank would leave me with a threat. Usually Frank would be partially dragged away because he didn't like people touching him. This time Frank was just giggling and put up no resistance and I could hear him singing and giggling as he was led off, presumably to the office.

The funny thing is, I remember a lot of Frank stories before that. He prank called my house at 3:00am and made my dad mad. He got older kids to do donuts on my lawn. He lit two of my books on fire during recess. He hacked into the computer system and deleted kids school records (supposedly, I don't know this one first hand, it could be an urban legend). But I have no memories of Frank after this. I don't remember if he started leaving me alone because I fought back and drew blood, or if this was around the time he got expelled for good. That was 6th grade, and he didn't make it to 7th grade in my school, so perhaps it was near the end of the school year.

His younger brother was a trip too, but that's another story for another time.

Past Blasts Vol 1: Mad Dog GBH

I'm going to start an ongoing series here where I talk about little snippets of my past. As I get older I will probably completely forget this stuff so I figure, blog it, and thus keep it around, if it's worth telling. Worth it to me that is. And if anyone else likes it, cool beans.

Today's snippet: Mad Dog GBH.

Mike was my mentor in high school. He was the cat who was the coolest. He liked all the cool bands before they were cool, and bands that no one else even knew about. I guess you could refer back to him as a "hipster." I don't know why he liked me at all, I was a total loser. He was a year older. Perhaps he wanted to be someone's mentor. And I was that guy. I liked the same music and had the same sense of humor and before you know it, we were both getting yelled at for playing 3-D tic tac toe in Spanish Class. I idolized him, he taught me the ropes on 'being cool,' and anytime he wanted to do anything, I jumped at the chance. Symbiotic-wise we had a great thing going.

Well, we went to some cool shows, and it was his goal to get me drunk and himself high. I was scared of the 'bad mamba jamba Mary Jane,' so I didn't want any pot (yet). And he had stopped drinking at that point, he had racked up too many bad experiences with booze so he had moved to pot. But he could buy, so he was not merely a hero to me, he was a SUPERHERO. We both agreed that going to shows "bombed" was the only way to really enjoy them. I supposed Jim Morrison smiled down at us and our so called "wisdom."

That night Mike introduced me to Mad Dog 20/20. He said it was a cheap wine, and that he got me two bottles to gun while heading to the show. I was a complete idiot, I didn't think anything of it. I slugged down those two pints or quarts or whatever they were as we cruised down Fort street to the show. We were going to see "Charged GBH." I remember we had some Gothic junk jamming on his stereo on the way down with the windows open. I was enjoying seeing all the dilapidated buildings as I slugged down this nasty ass shit and heard this depressing music. It had a certain karma to it all.

We got there and I was complaining.. man that shit tasted harsh! Really fucking harsh. Mike was laughing. He said "Wow, I'm impressed, I didn't seriously think you'd actually drink em both." So we get out of the car and head over to the place, and there's a line of pure punk rockers outside waiting for the doors to open. I start to feel a little drunk and we get in line. I'm checking out the Mohawks and skinhead chicks with ripped nylons and feeling warm.

My next memory is of falling constantly through the world, which is confusing to recall. And as I fell eventually things started to crystallize and finally my right eye hurt. And out of it I saw blurry brown while out of my left eye I saw a sideways view of the world from ground level. Yes, I was laying in a puddle, my one eye submerged. I struggled up and Mike is sitting there on a cement curb smoking a cigarette.

Apparently I got so drunk I sat down, then I fell over in the puddle. Mike thought I dropped dead. He dragged me off to the side of the line and I sat up, then fell sideways into a puddle, but he could tell I was breathing. And he waited. It was 2:00am when I came to. We obviously missed the show and he obviously stayed outside with me.

He said he was sure he had killed me and it scared him so bad that he threw up, he was paralyzed with fear until someone came over and looked at me and laughed and said I just needed to lay there until I came back around.

I dunno, maybe I got brain damage then and it explains how I am today.

At the time I couldn't get mad at him, I could tell he put himself through Hell for talking me into drinking those two Mad Dog 2020 bottles.

Looking back, I'm only sad that I was such a dumb ass. What the heck. What an idiot. Hey, don't check the alcohol content, just drink it down. Hey dumb me, here's a clue, if it tastes that fucking harsh, maybe it IS that fucking harsh.

To this day I remember exactly what that stuff tastes like.

And yea, um, no thanks, dude, I don't want a sip. Really.