Johnny America

 

Last Day of School

by

Jim­my saw the cur­tain quiver and knew that Kyle must fi­nal­ly be home. The back door opened and con­firmed his ar­rival with its screech­ing an­nounce­ment. The wa­ter stopped run­ning in the bath­room above him and Jim­my felt the lead­en steps of his fa­ther move to­ward the stairs. Kyle glanced briefly at his lit­tle broth­er as he hur­ried across the kitchen floor on­ly to be met by his fum­ing fa­ther. Dad raged across the room tack­ling his son, Kyle’s greasy mul­let slap­ping the wall.

“Where the hell have you been?” Dad snarled through grit­ted teeth.

Kyle mus­tered his tired, typ­i­cal re­sponse “out,” his eyes averted.

Dad reached de­mo­ni­a­cal­ly in­to Kyle’s pock­et and fished out a cell phone. Grab­bing his jean jack­et with one hand, Dad screamed, hold­ing the phone just cen­time­ters from his blem­ished face, “What the hell is this? Do you know what the fuck­ing hell THIS is? It’s a god­damn CELL phone you use­less shit! And I pay for this moth­er­fuck­er so I don’t have to waste my time wor­ry­ing about your sor­ry ass!”

Dad jerked the jack­et down­ward, send­ing Kyle down to the ground and un­fold­ed the phone.

“You un­grate­ful bas­tard,” he said, breath­ing again. He held the phone and fold­ed it back­ward, break­ing it in two.

Jim­my saw the McKen­zie twins and Daniel hud­dling to­geth­er near the bus stop.

As he ar­rived, he asked Daniel, “did’ja get that with your slingshot?”

“I’d like to say I did, but I took it from Mr. Brittles.”

Jim­my nod­ded and said, “hm­mm, that cat of yours is still a psycho.”

On the ground was a ju­ve­nile rab­bit, bleed­ing from his mouth and breath­ing heav­i­ly. It tried to flee the ogling boys but all the twist­ing and kick­ing was for noth­ing; it was im­mo­bile, un­able even to crawl away to find a place to die.

“What should we do with it?” asked Pat McKen­zie, the more an­noy­ing of the twins.

Daniel replied, “might be too late for ’em.”

Jim­my dis­agreed. “Maybe if I take him home and put him in the garage, he might heal up.”

“There’s no sense in sav­ing some­thing that’s bound to die, it’s just wastin’ time,” ex­plained Daniel as he poked a stick in­to the rabbit’s mouth, try­ing to pry it open. “See, Mr. Brit­tles is the one who de­cid­ed that, not me.”

Pat re­peat­ed, “well what do you want to do with it?”

Jim­my stepped away from the gath­er­ing and walked about 30 feet along the road, stooped down, and re­turned car­ry­ing a black stone in both hands. He bent to his knees above the pant­i­ng rab­bit, and with se­ri­ous ef­fort raised the stone to his chin and let it crash down up­on the soft, fur­ry animal.

Pat shrieked in hor­ror, “what did you go and do that for?”

There was a long pause be­fore Jim­my stat­ed, “He’s use­less now.…a re­al sor­ry bastard……B’sides, the bus is comin’”

Filed under Fiction on June 11th, 2005

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Reader Comments

Jay wrote:

I liked this one a lot.

Jackie wrote:

The lan­guage was a bit af­fect­ed, and the con­tent a bit familar.

sad and dark, but fun­ny. en­joy­able to the last word.

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