Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror

The Sooner They Learn WRATH JAMES WHITE

Pain is the nervous system’s primary indicator that we are doing something that might compromise the integrity of our bodies. It prevents us from destroying ourselves. To not know pain is to not understand what it takes to survive and succeed. Darrell was an educator, a teacher of pain. He had a warehouse of agonies concentrated within him that he needed to share, to diffuse amongst all those who had yet to know it, those who needed to learn.

The boys walked past Darrell, followed by the pungent aroma of tobacco. They were perhaps only eight or nine years old. Way too young to be smoking. The larger of the two boys held out a pack of Newports to his shorter friend as he coughed and choked on the coffin nail dangling from his own lip. He was obviously not used to smoking. Perhaps he could still be saved? Darrell began to follow the two boys, listening to their conversation, looking for the perfect opportunity to issue his sermon.

“Hey Sam, take a hit off this,” the larger boy said, shoving the pack of Newports into his friend’s hand.

“Naw, Joey. You know I don’t smoke. Besides, my mom would kill me if I came home with my breath smelling like an ashtray.”

Sam tried to hand the smokes back to Joey, who snatched them from his hand.

“Damn Sam! You’s a little bitch! I thought you was down? I was going to pick up some weed later. I suppose you wouldn’t smoke that neither?”

“Hell no! My mom would beat the hell out of me if she smelled that shit on me!”

“I can’t believe what a little punk you are. You scared of your mom? The bitch is like in her fifties! What the fuck is she going to do? I’d smack the hell out of my mom if she tried to talk some shit to me. I do whatever the hell I want!”

Joey took another long draw on his cigarette, smoking it down to the filter. He dug into his pack of Newports and pulled out another, looking around to make sure the other kids in the playground were watching so they could see how cool he was.

Darrell sat across the playground on a park bench, watching Joey. A tear rolled down his cheek. The anger built within him into a tempest, spilling from his emotion filled eyes into the air around him.

“Another child that we have failed,” he whispered, wiping away the tear with the tattered sleeve of his mangy plaid fur coat.

That kid knows nothing about pain, Darrell thought. He knows no consequences for his actions. It’s all fun and games to him. I have to teach him.

Darrell knew all about life, all about pain. He knew that it built character, made you strong, taught you discipline. He knew that it was something every child needed to know about.

Darrell freely acknowledged that he had failed his own children. He had let the world take them and it had broken them like kites in a hurricane. He watched them spin out of control into the maelstrom of drugs and crime until their shattered fragments had fallen headlong into the abyss, one in the grave and the other in prison. It was his fault. He’d been too permissive, too liberal. He’d allowed them to make up their own minds, make their own mistakes, hadn’t set down enough rules, hadn’t taught them about consequences and repercussions. Linda and Jake had grown up thinking the world revolved around them, that they were invincible. Now they were lost and it was Darrell’s fault. He had failed them. But, there were many other children in the world and he would not fail them. He would teach them all.

Darrell rose from the bench and stalked out of the park after Joey.

“The sooner they learn,” he mumbled as he closed the gap between them.

Joey’s eyes burned from the thick miasma of tobacco smoke that choked the room. He coughed repeatedly and started to retch. The unmistakable click of the revolver’s hammer cocking back immediately silenced his coughing fit. Quickly, he put the cigar back to his lips and sucked down more smoke.

He looked over at the huge disheveled old man that sat beside him, holding the revolver. Joey’s frightened bloodshot eyes pleaded with him, but the old man’s were ruthlessly silent. Joey coughed again. Darrell leaned over and placed the cocked and loaded.38 caliber Colt revolver directly to Joey’s head. The boy winced as he felt the chilling bite of the metal pressed against his temple, still he continued to dry heave. He had already regurgitated all the contents of his stomach. His throat was raw with the acid burn of stomach bile and the caustic fumes raking at his esophagus as he was forced to inhale more of the pungent smoke. The boy’s body began to hitch with sobs as tears raced down his cheeks.

Joey wanted to beg Darrell to let him stop, but held himself back. He had begged the old man just minutes before, only to be snatched out of his seat by the jaw and dragged within inches of the man’s enraged countenance, which had twisted into a horrible scowl. The old man stared into Joey’s eyes looking as if he was about to bite his face off, then he spun the cylinder on the revolver and dry-fired the gun against the boy’s temple. The hammer fell on an empty chamber with a dull hollow click. Joey’s anus clenched up and his testicles rose into his stomach. A violent trembling shook his entire body and he nearly fainted. He had seen the old man put three bullets into the revolver. He knew that the chances of him surviving another round of Russian roulette were not good.

The old man took the cigar from the boy’s lips and pressed it into his own palm where it sizzled as it scalded his flesh. “You stop smoking again and this is going in your eye,” he said in a voice that was hoarse and raspy, as if he had just smoked 6 boxes of cigars himself.

Joey put the cigar back to his lips and sucked down more smoke. He had never felt so sick or scared before. He was woozy and his stomach rolled as he sucked on the huge cigar. It no longer felt cool. It no longer made him feel like a man. Six empty cigar cartons lay on the floor amongst the butts and ashes of nearly a hundred cigars and six more cartons sat waiting for him. Joey felt like he was going to die. If the cigar smoke didn’t kill him, then he knew Darrell probably would.

Darrell was a child’s nightmare. He was the real boogieman. Draped about his neck was a necklace of severed Barbie doll heads, pacifiers and the miscellaneous limbs of broken action figures. The moth-eaten fur coat that Joey had originally thought was plaid was, in fact, fashioned from the hides of fur toys, Teddy bears, stuffed rabbits and big purple dinosaurs. Most of them still had their little glass eyes intact and they stared out of that bizarre collage of artificial pelts, as if beseeching you to rescue them. Some of the fur looked real, however, and were in the perfect shape of small dogs and cats. Some of these still appeared to have their skulls intact, though minus the eyes. It looked like some last minute attempt at a homemade Halloween costume or the place where childhood dreams found their death.

He was a huge man, well over two hundred pounds with a hard athletic build. He had a head full of gray hair that was wild and unwashed. His skin looked like some type of hard wrinkled leather. From the weathered landscape of his face, cold gray eyes stared without emotion, except when they flashed brilliantly with rage. Joey had passed him numerous times in the playground as he sat on the swings. They jokingly called him the Boogieman and made up stories about him kidnapping and punishing bad kids. Joey had noticed the haunted look in some of the other kid’s eyes when he made Boogieman jokes, but he had always laughed it off, thinking they were just little punks scared of a fairytale. Now, he knew that he wouldn’t be making jokes like that again. Now, he knew the stories were real.

Joey finally fainted, just short of finishing his last box. Darrell stepped back, dropping the pistol from the boy’s head to allow the limp body to fall to the concrete floor. He left the door open as he left. When Joey awoke, he’d realize that he’d been only yards away from his own house in his dad’s tool shed. He’d crawl into the house and try to sleep off the whole experience. He wouldn’t tell his dad what happened though. They never tell. They knew they deserved it.

There were no more good parents. The kind who knew when a child needed a trip to the woodshed and a belt or a switch pulled from an old tree lain across his backside ’til the welts ran with blood. The kind who knew how to pinch you until your flesh turned purple for giggling in church during service, while daring you to make another sound.

Nowadays, the child ruled the parent. They threw tantrums when they didn’t get what they wanted and parents gave in just to keep them quiet. Didn’t they know how easily quieted the child was who knew that a scream would immediately bring a slap across the face? Didn’t they know that one day these kids would have to learn that the world did not bend to their wills and may even roll right over them, leaving their broken bodies behind? There were no more good parents to teach these lessons. That’s why they needed Darrell.

It was already getting dark when he left Joey’s back yard. The shadows had locked arms to form battalions of night that laid siege to the entire town. Darrell locked arms with the shadows too. They were his friends, his allies. He moved among them easily. Few people even noticed him as he traveled among his tenebrous troops. He was just another penumbra in an army of darkness.

The couple making love in the Cadillac Escalade parked by the curb didn’t notice him either. Darrell would have likewise paid them no attention if it hadn’t been for the fact that he saw the school books in the backseat of the car as he passed.

“Children,” Darrell hissed in disgust. “Children fornicating in public.”

The disheveled old man drew back a fist wrapped tight in rags and punched it through the back window, just as the boy’s scrawny naked ass rose into the air preparing to impale the eager virgin beneath him with his throbbing young cock. He grabbed the boy by the hair and dragged him out through the passenger side window, in a hail of tempered glass.

When the boy hit the ground and rolled over, his face snarled up into a grimace of rage and confusion, Darrell could see that the kid was barely fourteen years old, not even old enough to be driving, let alone fucking, in his father’s car. The boy wasn’t even wearing a condom.

“You think you’re ready to be a father?” Darrell growled as he snatched the boy up by one arm. The boy swung at him with his free hand, missed, then bent down to pull up his pants and underwear to hide his diminishing erection.

Darrell reached down and grabbed the boy by his genitals, balls and all. The boy let out a helpless squeal.

“I asked you a question, boy.”

“Leave him alone!” The girl had shrugged her clothes back on and was yelling at Darrell through the shattered window.

Darrell let go of the boy’s arm and slapped the girl back into the car. “I’ll deal with you later,” he said turning his attention back to the boy. He tugged on the boy’s penis, stretching it out until it felt like it would tear right out from between his legs.

“Aaaaaaargh! Fuck man, that shit hurts! Let me go motherfucker! What are you her father or something? We were just having a little fun. Jesus, don’t hurt me! Arrgh! Heeeelp!!! Fuck! Let me go!”

Darrell leaned in close until his foul breath, reeking of rotten candy, steamed in the boy’s face. “I should rip it the fuck off and keep it on ice until you’re old enough to know what to do with it!” He reached into the car and dragged the girl out of the car by her hair. He seized her by the throat and held her against the car. “I’m not your father. I care a hell of a lot more than that. So, I’m only going to say this one time. If I ever catch you two going at it again, then I’ll make sure you never have to worry about ruining your lives by catching AIDS or herpes or hepatitis or getting pregnant. I’ll rip your cock right off and I’ll fill your pussy full of super glue and sew it the fuck closed! You are too young! Do you understand me?”

They both nodded with eyes filled with tears. He let them go and they ran off down the street. When they were a block away the boy turned around and yelled, “You crazy motherfucker! I’m calling the cops!”

Maybe he would. Maybe he wouldn’t. Darrell really didn’t care either way. He knew one thing for certain though. That relationship was over. As the boy ran off down the street, Darrell aimed at the center of his back and squeezed off a shot. The boy’s back erupted and bloomed bright red. He pitched forward onto his face, hitting the asphalt with a wet smack. His prone body convulsed for a second and then lay still. He wasn’t dead, but Darrell knew that the bullet had likely shattered his spine. He wouldn’t be getting any young girls pregnant now and definitely wouldn’t be catching AIDS. The horny little bastard wouldn’t be able to feel anything below the waist for the rest of his life. The girl screamed and ran even faster, disappearing around the corner. Darrell chuckled to himself and continued down the street sticking tight to the shadows, just in case the police were already out looking for him.

Darrell walked another four blocks to the big shopping mall on Market Street. He entered the Sears department store and wandered around in a trance. He was thinking about his own children again when he heard the child screaming over in the toy section. Linda and Jake used to scream like that when they wanted something. He’d always given in after they’d embarrassed him, enduring the looks of pity and disgust on the faces of other parents as they watched him struggle with his undisciplined brats. He remembered the look on their faces that asked, “Why doesn’t he give those two little monsters a good spanking?” Back then, he’d felt that corporal punishment was cruel. Now, after seeing how they’d turned out — staying out all hours of the night, drinking, using drugs, getting into fights, having sex at ages thirteen and fourteen, stealing, dropping out of school, one eventually going to prison and the other becoming a crack whore who overdosed on heroin after being used and discarded by half the perverts in town — he realized that not disciplining them more harshly had been the true cruelty. They had never listened to a damn thing he said to dissuade them from their self-destructive behavior and now they were lost forever.

The sound of that child screeching for his harried mother to buy him a new PlayStation video game brought back all those memories. Darrell stormed over to them fuming mad and dangerously close to exploding.

The screaming, crying, cussing, undisciplined little cur threw a convulsive tantrum while still clinging to its mother’s leg. Darrell was amazed as the little beast balled up its fingers into a fist and punched his mother in the abdomen. The redheaded little terror was barely five years old and already in control of his parent.

“I want it! I want it! I want it!”

“Stop it!” The woman yelled back in a voice that quivered with emotion. She was near the breaking point, teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Her hellacious offspring screeched at her in a shrill whine that raised the hair on Darrell’s neck. The redheaded demon threw itself on the floor and began to kick like an overturned cockroach. This was another one who still believed that the universe should bend to its will and that any frustration to its desires could be easily dispelled with a few well-placed and infinitely irritating screams. Every moment that he went undisciplined was another day in jail, or on drugs, or selling his ass on the streets. He had to be taught.

The entire store seemed to be staring at the little shrieking harpy and its mother with disapproving eyes, awaiting the moment when the obviously overwhelmed woman would actually begin to act like a parent and silence her son’s fit of egocentric rage with some corrective discipline in the form of a slap. It would never happen, not until the child was too old for it to do any good. The moment dragged on and on, the mother withering beneath the child’s aural assault, slowly being conquered, just on the verge of admitting defeat and giving in to her son’s whim.

In a last ditch effort to regain a control that had obviously been abdicated long ago, the mother gave voice to her parental inadequacies with a cry of defeat that masqueraded as a threat, but only symbolized failure and imminent resignation to all those who heard it, including the delinquent it was meant to correct. “Wait ’til your father gets home! Do you want me to call Daddy?”

This was followed immediately by words that told all that witnessed the irksome spectacle that there was no respite in sight. “Do you want a time out?!”

Darrell’s stomach rolled. What the hell had happened to parents? He had tried that tactic himself. The fool who invented it should be roasted alive on a spit, in Darrell’s opinion. It was just another admission of the parent’s loss of control.

The boy answered his mother predictably and appropriately. “Fuck you!” The words flew out of his mouth along with a spray of spittle.

The child began to punch at its mother again. Darrell could take no more. The woman was staring up at the ceiling, as if praying to god to rescue her from her own child, when Darrell charged down the isle, looking like a troll from under a bridge in some long forgotten fairytale.

The ankle-biting little rug-rat was still yelling and screaming. Darrell pushed the mother aside and slapped the child to the floor with a backhanded swing that collided with his mouth with the sound of a gunshot. The kid’s head bounced off the tile with a loud smack that effectively cut off his shrill ranting. A trickle of blood ran down from the crack that bisected his lip. With eyes glazed in shock and dizzy from the blow, he looked up at Darrell. The child trembled as he met Darrell’s feral gaze, feeling like a rabbit cornered by a voracious wolf.

The little redheaded monster screamed for his mother. Darrell drew back and backhanded him again, this time with a closed fist. The force of the blow knocked the boy over backwards. He landed face down on the tile floor. When he looked up, his left eye was nearly swollen shut with a tremendous black and purple bruise that went from cheek to temple. It looked as if he’d just gone twelve rounds in a boxing match.

Darrell leaned over and pointed a long gnarled finger into the boy’s face. His eyes seethed with rage and madness burning like an electrical fire. “You yell one more time and I will beat the life out of you. Do you hear me?”

The child nodded, his jaw still hanging open in shock. He looked over Darrell’s shoulder, searching for his mother.

She finally overcame her own shock enough to protest. “What the hell are you doing to my baby!”

She charged the gray-haired old man who’d just battered her son, swinging a fist and hooking her fingernails into claws, reaching out for Darrell’s face, determined to make him pay for hurting her child.

Darrell turned and casually caught the woman by her throat, pinching her windpipe closed just enough to guarantee her silence.

“Shhhhh!” he said, then turned back to the child, still holding his mother in an iron grip. He had to concentrate to keep his rage in check so that he didn’t crush her esophagus.

Why do they even bother having children if they don’t know how to control them? he wondered.

“I want you to apologize to your mother for disobeying her and embarrassing her like that in public. SAY IT!!!”

“I–I’m sorry mommy!” the child cried and tears began to flow from his eyes steadily.

“And if you ever disobey your mother again, I’ll be back for you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Darrell released the kid’s mother and she rushed to scoop up her son.

They held each other and cried as Darrell turned and walked toward the exit. On his way, he passed a cherubic, blonde-haired, three-year-old baby girl sitting in a stroller with a pacifier in her mouth. She was being pushed along by an overweight woman, roughly Darrell’s age, who was obviously her grandmother. The child’s real mother was probably little more than a teenager. As Darrell passed, he reached down and overturned the stroller, dumping the child out onto the floor and leaving the toddler screaming as if it had been fatally assaulted. Darrell bent over and retrieved the baby’s pacifier, adding it to his necklace. He carried the stroller away with him as both parent and child screamed at his back.

“The sooner they learn the better,” he muttered, twisting the stroller into a mass of warped metal and plastic. The little girl had been nearly four years old, at least three years too old to be riding in a stroller and sucking on a pacifier.

“The sooner they learn,” he repeated.

He walked out of the mall and tossed that tortured relic of some years ago baby shower into the dumpster, wondering almost casually if he was perhaps taking his crusade too far. He reassured himself that all the kids he had disciplined were bad kids who would have only gotten worse if not for his intervention, that he was doing it for their own good. But, he wondered if he was also getting a little pleasure out of it, if perhaps he was not seeking to save the children but to punish them, to hurt them. He wondered if he was seeking revenge. Maybe, it was the parents he should have been punishing and not the children? Parents like him, who had failed their children, allowing them to become the brats that they were. Maybe, it wasn’t enough to teach the kids? Maybe, he needed to include the parents in his education?

“Let me get another hit off that, mom.”

Darrell’s head whipped around so fast he nearly broke his own neck.

There stood the answer to his musings in the form of a mother and daughter dressed identically in skintight halter-tops, sans brassieres, and mini-skirts so short that you could tell they were not wearing panties beneath them and that they had recently shaved. They were both smoking cigarettes and passing a bottle of Crown Royal back and forth. The girl couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. It was obvious that she and her mother were prostitutes, just like Darrell’s baby girl Linda, who’d died in an alley with a needle in her arm and the semen of the more than a dozen different men she’d fucked that night still leaking out of her. Darrell wanted to scream. He wanted to yell at the top of his lungs. A parent was supposed to want better for their child than what they had. They were supposed to guide them, steer them away from making the same mistakes they made. What this mother was doing was abominable. She had to be punished.

How could she let her child do that?!!!

He wanted to rip her apart. He would show that little girl what became of women who sold themselves on street corners. He reached into his coat and closed his hands around the hunting knife in his left pocket and the Colt revolver in the other.

“The sooner they learn,” he muttered as he stalked after them.

“Let’s go back to the motel, relax, and smoke these last couple of rocks before we hit the stroll again tonight. Okay baby?”

“Cool! I need a little pick me up. I feel like shit tonight.”

“Get it together honey! There’s a convention in town tonight. There’ll be twice as many tricks on the strip tonight and that means mo’ money.”

Acid roiled in Darrell’s stomach as he fought to hold in his rage and revulsion. As much as he wanted to attack them right then and there, he needed to be alone with them.

He followed closely, matching their footsteps as he slipped from shadow to shadow. He ducked behind some bushes just yards from where the mother stopped to squat by the curb and relieve herself. He could smell the acrid ammonia of her urine wafting from the gutter. His stomach lurched and this time he did regurgitate. Luckily, they had already moved off down the road and did not see him drop to his knees and throw up his lunch in the same gutter where the whore had just urinated. His body trembled with fury as he rose and continued his pursuit.

Darrell kept thinking of his little girl. Her anus and vagina had been bruised and torn, her nipples bitten, there were welts and cuts on her back and buttocks, livid blue and purple contusions around her throat from manual strangulation. He couldn’t believe that she hadn’t been murdered. Darrell had gotten sick then too, when the coroner told him that many of the bruises were old and healing at different rates. They’d been acquired at different times and most likely at the hands of different men. Trophies of her profession. This is what that little girl had in store, the path her mother was leading her toward. A life where a needle full of heroin and a cardiac arrest would be the greatest kindness she could hope for. Darrell gritted his teeth and flicked open the blade of his hunting knife.

The little girl kept looking back over her shoulder, peering into the darkness as if she could sense him there. Most likely, it was just her normal paranoia, heightened by cocaine use. Finally, they turned the corner and the mother began fishing into her purse for her keys. Darrell moved in closer as they approached the door to one of the rundown rooms.

The two whores staggered up to the motel, reeling from alcohol and a cocktail of illegal drugs. They never saw the powerful looking old man in the multi-colored fur coat as he came rushing at them from behind a nearby parked car. He forced them into the room, slamming the door behind him.

Darrell had bound them both in duck tape. He’d left the mother’s ankles unbound to allow him access. He didn’t gag her either. He wanted her daughter to hear her scream.

“Stop hurting my mommy!” screamed the twelve-year-old girl. Mascara ran down her face like black tears and lipstick smeared across her lips and cheeks like bright red welts. Darrell punched his entire arm into her mother’s dilated vagina up to the elbow.

“Pleeeease! Stop hurting my mommy!”

A wet, sticky, ripping sound accompanied each thrust as he drove his arm in deeper, tearing her reproductive system apart. The bottle of Crown Royal he’d shoved into her rectum shattered. Her vagina continued to tear until cunt and asshole became one gaping orifice, dripping blood in a tremendous pool that saturated the piss-stained motel carpeting. The woman had stopped screaming and now only whimpered helplessly. Her eyes were vacant, fixed and dilated. Her mind had snapped. Tears still streamed down her cheeks, turning brown as they ran in rivulets through the feces that covered her face from when Darrell had defecated upon her.

“Is this what you want? Is this how you want to end up? You still want to be just like your mommy?” Darrell growled, staring directly into the young girl’s face as she continued to scream.

“You’d better get your ass back in school and make something of yourself or I’ll personally make sure that you suffer worse than this.”

Darrell withdrew his arm from the mother’s vandalized twat with a hideous “Shlorp!” It was covered in blood, excrement, and tissue. Darrell scowled as he looked about for a place to clean it. He went into the bathroom to wash up, leaving the two whores bleeding and crying on the bedroom floor. When he returned, he had his knife open.

“Watch this, little girl. Watch what men like me do to whores.”

He grabbed the girl’s mother by the hair and flipped her over onto her back. He knelt down on top of her and began to saw off her breasts.

She began screaming again. Twisting her nipple and stretching her breast taut, he sawed down to the white of her ribcage and tore her entire mammary gland free of her chest. He worked her over with the knife for the better part of an hour. Her terrible anguished screams grew deafening in the tiny apartment. She began to convulse in agony as Darrell cut a long incision around her face and began peeling it off of her skull. When he finally left the room, he took the woman’s breasts, face and vagina with him, leaving her hollowed out remains writhing and shrieking in an ever-widening pool of blood. He never touched the little girl. There had been no need.

“If you don’t get your life in order, go back to school and stay off these streets, you will see me again.”

She got the message.

By the time the old man left the apartment, it was well past midnight. The streets were bustling with activity and he was exhausted and feeling decidedly anti-social. He just wanted to go home. Today had been more exciting than most and he was drained. There were so many children to save and he was just one man. He had miles to walk to his home on the other end of town. He scrambled along quickly, imagining snuggling beneath his covers with a good book and a cup of warm tea. He tried to stick to the shadows as much as possible as he made his way toward home. He knew that the cops would be looking for him and he was not exactly inconspicuous.

He barely noticed when the car full of kids pulled up alongside him. Until they jumped out and attacked him.

“That’s him!” a tiny hoarse voice cried out from the car. It was Joey, the smoker.

One of the larger boys lunged out of the car and swung a baseball bat at Darrell’s head. It connected with a loud crack that sent the old man sprawling onto the floor.

“That was my fucking brother you almost killed, you fucking freak!”

It happened so fast that he didn’t have time to go for his gun. The kids held him down and searched his pockets, removing both his knife and his revolver before they began kicking and punching him.

Boots, sneakers, a baseball bat and what may have been a pipe crashed down on his head and face, cracked his ribs, crushed his hands and shattered his kneecaps. They were beating him to death. Darrell was barely conscious when he felt the splash of liquid being poured all over him, followed by the pungent odor of gasoline. Then, he was burning. He could even hear the children’s laughter over his own screams.

They never learned.

Joey and his big brother Mike snuck back into the house through the basement window and tip-toed all the way upstairs to their bedrooms on the second floor, careful not to wake their parents. They still smelled like smoke and gasoline. They both lay in their beds and tried to shut out the image of that old bum’s face sizzling and running off his skull like frying lard as the flames consumed him. Joey had just managed to quiet the screams in his head when he heard the window slide open and that same burnt pork smell that had lingered in the air after their impromptu cremation came wafting into the room, roaring up his nostrils.

He opened his eyes just as Darrell’s charred skeletal face moved towards him, blocking the moonlight. Joey was sure that the old man had been dead when they left him smoldering on the sidewalk. When he examined the man’s face — eyes missing, teeth gleaming through where his lips had burned away, bits of burnt tissue clinging to an otherwise bare skull, other bits flaking away and fluttering to the floor as ash — he saw nothing to contradict his original assessment. Darrell was indeed a corpse. He tried to scream, but the old man pinched his windpipe closed before he could utter a peep.

Darrell sparked the flame on the Bic lighter clutched in his blackened fingers and held it up to Joey’s face.

“You have to learn not to play with fire, Joey.”

Joey tried to scream again as the crazy old dead guy aimed the flame up his right nostril. Joey’s flesh began to sizzle. He writhed on the bed in nerve-searing anguish, but Darrell held him firm.

The boy had learned at least one of the lessons. He knew now that there were things in the world that could hurt him, that he was not invincible and that he could not get away with anything he wanted. The other lessons would take longer and be much more painful. But, Darrell had time. The boy had to learn.

Darrell would not let him grow up to be a criminal like his son Jake, on death row for murdering a drug dealer. He would teach the boy better. The old man moved the lighter to Joey’s eyelid and smiled as his eyeball sizzled and popped.