Served Cold – Part 1

Plip.

Anthony Baxter watched the blood drop hit the surface of the water. Tendrils of crimson spread like a microscopic organism reaching for prey before the blood dissolved. It had barely blended with the stained water in the sink when another drop fell from the tip of Anthony’s nose to start the process over again.

The water was almost red when the slow leak stopped. Anthony closed his eyes and scooped up a handful of water, splashing his face to wash congealed blood from his lips and around the rims of his nostrils. Raising his head, he stared at the fresh bruises on his face.

Though his nose tickled, he wouldn’t sniffle. It was too soon after the fight, and if he sniffled, he would taste blood.

Fight? Anthony thought and snorted, wiping away the spray of gelled blood that spattered his upper lip.

A fight meant he had a chance to defend himself. It was always the same. The odds changed from day to day, but he had never been in a fair fight. He was surrounded, held in place, and forced to take a beating.

Anthony had suffered through almost three years of abuse since his parents moved into the neighborhood, but some time after the second year, the attacks became a near daily occurrence. Then it felt more like an eternity.

His parents made complaints at the school during the first year, and they sometimes called the police on Anthony’s attackers. But it never improved his standing in the social pecking order. The bullies changed for a few weeks, and the attacks never abated.

After that, Anthony wasn’t sure if his parents had given up or the police did, but somebody had.

It wasn’t fair. Certainly he knew by then life would never be fair, but the anger he felt when he stared at his battered face continued to build, and there was no vent.

Anthony sighed at his reflection. “Face it. You’re just a human punching bag.”

The door of the bathroom opened. Anthony didn’t need to look to know it was his mother returning from her job as a call center support specialist.

Her soft groan was all too familiar, as was her frustrated expression when he turned from the counter to look at her. “Again?” she asked.

Anthony tried not to glare at her, but over time, the tone of her question had changed to sound more like an accusation than a sentiment of concern. Anthony walked past her without a word.

She followed him, and though he knew it would annoy her, he shut the door to his bedroom in her face. She opened it and began to rant, but he heard nothing of it.

He went to his desk and took his CD player before moving to the bed to lay down. Staring at his mother, he slipped on the headphones and hit play.

An electronic whir sounded through the cheap speakers before a distorted electric guitar started to growl.

His mother kept talking until she noticed Anthony had drowned her out. He watched her rub her forehead before she went to the door and slammed it loud enough to be heard over the roar of the guitar.

Heavy metal music hadn’t appealed to Anthony until he noticed how effectively it could end a lecture. He just slipped on his headphones, and his parents were muted. After a few months, they didn’t even try to take the headphones off. They just gave up and left.

Long before they’d given up, Anthony had found something in the music he could identify with. The same rage building in him could be heard in the growled voices of the singers, or in the distorted voices of the guitars.

For as much as he could agree with the sentiments in the music, he knew there was nothing he could do to get over his rage. If he ever saw a one-on-one fight with a bully, he might get one punch in before he was knocked down. Even knowing it, the anger inside him longed for his one chance.

***

Logan Baxter felt his wife nudge his leg under the dinner table with her foot. Anne nodded toward their son, a subtle hint that Logan needed to say something. “Son, your mother says you got into another fight today.”

Anthony regarded him with a scowl of contempt, and Logan almost squirmed in his seat. “I don’t want to lecture you, Anthony. I just…do you want to talk about it?”

“What is there to talk about? Today it was three to one odds. I didn’t talk to any of them or even fucking look—”

“Anthony!” Anne gasped.

Logan said, “Apologize to your mother!”

“Or what? Will you hit me too? Go ahead. Everybody else does.”

Logan tensed his jaw when Anthony got up from the table. “Anthony, get back here and finish your dinner.”

“Fuck dinner.” Anthony turned around to glare at Logan. “Fuck the fight, fuck talking about it, and fuck you too.”

***

Anthony stood in his closet, swaying his head in time with the music while he stared up at an empty metal coat hanger. He wasn’t so heavy, and the wire could support him if he twisted the top around using a pair of pliers.

He knew he wouldn’t, nor would he bother looking for the pliers. The wooden hanger rod would probably snap halfway through the job, and then he would have to explain the bruise around his neck.

But recently he’d spent more time standing in his closet thinking about it. He’d considered using the hanger on a doorknob, or perhaps on the shower curtain bar. It had survived a test using chin ups, so he knew the bar could support him long enough to finish him off.

The bullies gave no indication that they would leave Anthony alone any time soon, and the concept of avoiding the pain had become pleasant, even if he wasn’t ready to consider the thoughts as anything but a fantasy.

He shut the closet door, taking a pair of jeans out of his dirty clothes pile to stuff under the door and block the light. Settling himself into the pile of clothing, he cut off the music.

This is it, he thought. This is what death feels like.

Coward.

The voice wasn’t his own. He knew it hadn’t been, though it almost sounded the same. There was a mechanical quality to it, something that made the voice in his head seem colder.

Who are you?

I’m you. I’m the anger you keep denying, and I’ve just about had it with you.

Anthony shrugged. Yeah, and fuck you too. If you’re me, you know the odds I face every day. Unless you’ve got a plan to even the score, I suggest you shut up and walk away. Or float away, whatever you crazy people voices do.

If I’m talking to you now, doesn’t that mean you’ve gone crazy?

“Yeah, probably,” Anthony said. “But being crazy won’t change anything.”

There was a long silence. Suppose I could give you a way to get one bully alone?

“Let me predict what will happen. I’ll get one punch, and then I’ll get beat up. The next day, I’ll get beat up even worse. They’ll say I had it coming for picking a fight.”

Anthony raised a hand to point at the coat hangers. “The only good solution is a final solution, but I’m not ready to embrace it yet.”

Another silence followed before the voice spoke again. If you’re checking out, you could take one down with you.

“What?”

You could take one of the bullies with you. Maybe even a few of them. Suppose you made a bomb.

Anthony rolled his eyes. “Terrific, I’ve got a retard for a split personality. How am I going to make a bomb? They don’t list bomb making in the encyclopedia, do they?”

Well—

“No, stop talking and just listen. If I were going to take a bully down, I wouldn’t try to kill him. I’d get him to kill me, and then I’d let him take the fall for my murder. Then his whole life would be ruined before he ever got started. Then…then he’d be like me.”

How would you do it?

“Do what?”

How would you make him mad enough to kill you?

“Oh, I suppose I’d stalk him without letting him know it was me before I started dropping hints that maybe it was. So eventually, he would confront me and kill me. After my body was found, they would search my room, where I would leave a letter saying how I thought this bully was trying to kill me.”

So what’s stopping you?

It was Anthony’s turn to lapse into silence.

***

Anthony picked his target two days later. The choice wasn’t difficult, as Phillip Carson was the next bully to stand in front of him and pummel his face while two other boys held his arms at his sides.

The previous attack was made by a different set of bullies, but it didn’t matter to Anthony. Phillip’s sycophant followers, Eric Maxwell and Louis Smith, would be granted mercy too. Today was a new day, and the slate would be wiped clean for every bully but Phillip.

Crack.

Another punch struck Anthony’s cheekbone and his vision went grey as his body sagged. The bullies let go of his arms, and he landed hard on his knees.

Phillip whined, “Are you gonna cry now?”

Might as well get the ball rolling today. Anthony snorted, grimacing as the taste of blood filled his mouth.

Phillip grinned, but his eyes grew wide when Anthony spit a wad of blood. He tried to step back to avoid getting hit, but the wad still splattered over the crotch of his jeans where Anthony had been aiming.

Sinking back to sit on his calves, Anthony made a lopsided smile. “It’s no wonder you’re so mad today. You started your period.”

The bullies on either side of him laughed. He was going to take more lumps for his defiance, but he enjoyed the stunned look of confusion on Phillip’s face.

“Ooh, that was a good one,” Eric teased. The short and stocky red-head wasn’t big enough to be a bully on his own, so he always antagonized Phillip instead. “He called you a pussy, man. Are you going to let him get away with that?”

Phillip’s expression hardened before he shook his head. He drew his leg back for a kick, but Anthony was quicker to rise up on his knees.

He jabbed his fist under the blood stain, and Phillip dropped to the ground.

He groaned at his friends as they rushed to help him up. Before they could, Anthony lowered his head and leapt to drive the top of his head into Phillip’s face.

Pain flared in his scalp as Phillip’s front teeth cut him. When he fell back, Anthony saw his own wounds would be worth the pain for once.

Phillip stared back at him with an expression of dazed shock while he closed a hand over his nose and mouth. Blood dripped from his chin, and it was no slow leak.

Phillip’s hand fell as his face pinched into an ugly mask of rage. He leapt at Anthony, pinning the smaller boy to the ground before he began throwing wild punches at the sides of Anthony’s head. He didn’t stop until his friends pulled him off.

“Damn, man!” Eric said. “You could have killed him.”

Not yet, Anthony thought. That will come later.

***

“I can’t believe that little freak thought he was going to kick my ass,” Phillip complained. “Just for that, I’m going to spend the next week making his life a living hell.”

Eric laughed with vicious excitement, pumped up from the watching the fight. “You don’t already?”

“No, what I did before was a walk in the park. He’s really going to pay for this.” Phillip opened the front door of his house and dropped his bag on the floor. “You guys get the game set up. I have to water my nose.”

“You mean powder,” Louis said.

Tall and dark, Louis was only an inch shorter than Phillip. They’d fought before to see who was better, usually with the result being a draw. This was why Phillip was willing to cut him some slack.

Waving his free hand, Phillip said, “Nah, I mean water.”

He ignored the other jokes hurled by his friends and went to the bathroom.

His reflection in the mirror was ghastly. He couldn’t remember a time in his life when he had ever seen so much blood coming from out of his own face. He’d seen a similar sight just about every time he paid Anthony a visit, and the thought struck him that he could almost understand why the scrawny kid had decided to fight back.

But such was not the social pecking order of school life. Anthony knew it, or he used to.

In Phillip’s opinion, Anthony needed a reminder about his place in life.