Cameron Pierce - Abortion Arcade

“Our wedding feast,” she says.

“You’re not mad at me for everything that happened?”

She smiles. “Anything you’ve done, I’ve done worse.”

We turn back to our separate scavenging, inspecting the foods we’ve already discarded, opening new packages in hopes of discovering something that looks as familiar as a human heart. After a while, we’ve stockpiled a heaping mound of foodstuffs on the floor. We’re kind of bored of searching too. And hungry.

We sit down cross-legged beside each other and examine the food pyramid. I pick up a round, spongy dark thing that smells like sweat. “Let’s both try one at the same time,” I say.

Pym nods and picks up a flat, jagged yellow thing speck-led on top with tiny crusted teardrops. We raise the human food to our mouths and bite down at the same time.

I chew the spongy dark thing, not enjoying the alien texture at all. The taste is even worse.

We spit out the horrible foodstuffs at the same time, retching and wiping our tongues with our hands.

“This shit is horrible,” Pym says.

“I agree. Hold on a moment. I think I’m going to vomit.” I stand up and stagger toward a stack of food packages that serves as a wall sectioning off a private little area of the room.

I pull down my pants out of Pym’s view. I need to shit real bad.

When I’m done with my business, I pull up my pants and look down at the pile of shit on the floor. There’s a piece of paper stuck in the shit. I bend down to see it better.

“What are you doing over there? It smells horrible,” Pym calls.

The thing sticking out of my shit is the letter she wrote to me and then chewed up and swallowed right before she was married off to Bill. I pry the letter shard out of my shit and wipe it off on the floor. When it’s clean, I read the words, curious to know what fragment of her work chanced survival. I laugh a little to myself. My heart feels good. Alone in this strange room with Pym, with no direction home, life is beautiful.

I return to where she sits beside the pile of inedible crap, wishing we had some hearts or brains to eat.

I hand her this shit-stained scrap of paper that says I love you . Rather than a desperate confession or a funny kid thing to say, it feels true this time. It feels like a new beginning.

Danny the werewolf took off his headphones mid-Holy Diver as he walked into first period. The other students were playing the final air guitar notes of Heavy Metal High’s Alegiance to Death. He sat at a desk in the back of the classroom beside Barbetta, head cheerleader and girlfriend of Moose Elwood, star quarterback of the football team.

The honor roll metalheads sitting near the front of the class started up their usual banter.

“Werewolves suck,” said Richie Bratwurst, the fat smartass.

“Watch out, loser,” said somebody else, as a spitball zipped past Danny’s snout.

Laughter erupted throughout the classroom. Danny pulled his math book from his backpack and opened to a random page. He pretended to study a geometry graph.

Ever since Moose Elwood beat him out for the quarterback job during summer training camp three years ago, picking on Danny had become routine. It was the life of a backup, the life of a loser who bore his cross of failure because others enjoyed watching him suffer.

Mr. Ferrell snubbed a cigarette out on his desk and approached the blackboard. “Quiet up, class. Danny’s a shame to us all, but your final test is next week and we’ve still got to cover the mathematics of the hair metal solo.”

Danny shivered; his fur reddened. Math was his worst subject. He would be lucky to squeeze by with a D this semester. He couldn’t even find the square root of most Black Sabbath songs, something most students had mastered during the first week.

As Mr. Ferrell scribbled musical notes and a stick figure of Satan on the board, Barbetta slipped a note onto Danny’s desk.

His heart raced. Barbetta was the most beautiful girl in school. She had gotten run over by a train on two occasions.

Few metalheads mustered the courage to orchestrate one train accident. Surviving two of them made her a school legend. All Danny ever wanted was to be a legend.

Danny unfolded the note and read You better lose it .

Lose what , he replied.

Barbetta pressed a tissue to her eyes and passed the note back to him. Your virginity .

Everyone in school knew that Danny had never staged a single accident. Why bother , he wrote. I’m waiting for the right time .

You better do it quick. Moose got in an accident this morning . Of course he did. He’s team captain . It’s pre-game ritual .

Moose died this morning .

Danny began to sweat.

Barbetta broke into a crying fit and ran out of the classroom. All of the students faced Danny, glaring at him with their fiercest Danzig grimaces, which they had learned in Facial Education.

Mr. Ferrell broke his chalk and crushed it to dust between the fingers of one of his chain mail gloves. “Danny, this is the third time this week that you’ve upset a member of the fairer gender. Should I duct tape your mouth again, or can I trust that you’ll sit still and fail quietly?”

Danny wiped the sweat from his furry forehead and stared at the note lying on his desk. “Mr. Ferrell, I—”

“Give me that paper,” Mr. Ferrel marched down the rows of desks, “there’s no note-taking in math class.” He swiped the note from the desk and held it up to the fluorescent lights.

After he stared at it for over a minute, he crumpled the paper and shoved it in his mouth. He gulped it down and in a low voice said, “A dark day is upon us. Go to the dean’s office, Danny. Surely you’re responsible for this tragedy.”

The bell rang, announcing the start of second period.

Danny fidgeted in the chair across from Dean Hellfrost.

The dean clasped her icicle fingers and cracked her knuckles, releasing a cluster of damned souls that floated out of her translucent hands and popped on the stucco ceiling.

“I’m sure half the school heard about Moose during passing period, but I still must break the news officially. You realize what this means, don’t you?” she said.

Danny scratched at the fur beneath his jersey. He itched all over. His tongue felt like a wad of cotton.

Dean Hellfrost rapped her nails on her desk. “It means you’ll have to play in tonight’s conference game against Old Time. This has me in a fret, Danny. We’ve beat the Country Vampires for many consecutive years. Even if Moose Elwood is dead, losing this game would be a huge letdown to him. A real disservice to his memory. So keep him in mind while you’re on the field tonight, will you?

Which brings me to my next concern. As per league rules, all starters must have engaged in at least one legitimate accident at some point in their high school career prior to taking the field. To the best of my knowledge, you’re the only upper classman on the team with zero accidents on your record.” She narrowed her cold eyes at Danny.

“You’re not afraid of getting hurt, are you?”

“N-no mam,” Danny said.

“Good,” she said. “Life demands pain because pain gives us meaning.”

“Y-yes mam.”

“You’ve got until five o’clock to stage a horrific accident, something even Moose wouldn’t have dared. Can a werewolf like you accomplish that?”

Danny’s head bobbed up and down.

“Then get out of my office. We have a conference to win.”

Danny stood and left the dean’s office, his shoulders slumped. His eyes welled with tears.