Cameron Pierce - Abortion Arcade

Danny pulled a tissue from the box on the secretary’s counter and left the school office.

In the gymnasium, the school band was playing Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast. The noise was quiet in the office, but deathly loud once Danny stepped outside.

The October heat pelted him, but it was nothing compared to last month, when the temperature never fell below 115 degrees. The scorching weather actually relieved Danny now. He could pretend those weren’t tears in his eyes. Just sweat.

He saw no sign of the skelecops in the main hallway.

They’d probably gone off to smoke pot. Dabbing at his eyes with the tissue, Danny pushed through the door of the men’s bathroom. He walked to the far stall and locked himself inside, where he sobbed quietly until a gong sounded. Second period would end in five minutes. He had to collect himself.

His time to stage an accident had pounced upon him like a thunder cat that lashed out more fiercely with every passing minute. He needed to plan something brave and tragic, something splendid and totally metal… something greater than the benchwarmer he would always be.

He made it to history class on time. The other students refrained from their usual taunts. In fact, they completely ignored him as the metalbot, Mr. 666, took attendance and reminisced about the crucifixion of Alice Cooper, which was October’s central history lesson.

Ten minutes into third period, feedback reverberated from the intercom. Dean Hellfrost’s voice crackled over the wash of static. “Staff and students, I regret to inform you that Moose Elwood, our heroic quarterback, is dead.

He passed away this morning after his monster truck collided with two military carriers hauling napalm. This is a sad day for everyone at Heavy Metal High. Benchwarmer Danny has vowed to be ready for tonight’s game, so if you see him, give him a swift kick in the ass. Nobody will get in the way of our conference title. The Old Time Country Vampires are going down!”

Mr. 666 unleashed a string of profane beeps and whirrs.

Nerbert Neeb, the team kicker who always sat in the seat closest to the podium because he had an android fetish, slammed his forehead against his desk. “There goes our season,” Nerbert groaned.

Hushed banter filled the room until Mr. 666 punched a hole through the dry erase board. “Take this news as a history lesson, class. By the end of the period, I want you to turn in a two page paper on how Alice Cooper would have acted in the face of such adversity.” The metalbot kicked the clipboard to a corner of the room and wheeled to its desk.

Danny hung his head. He pinched his furry thigh to distract himself from all his worry. He feared he would start crying again.

He fished a notebook out of his backpack and opened to the first blank page. Pen in hand, he considered all the ways he could approach this paper. He doodled a caricature of himself in the margin and then scribbled a pack of redneck vampires preparing to suck his blood.

A spitball pelted Danny in the face. The class sniggered as he wiped it off. He lowered his head, choosing to put all his energy into writing so that he could ignore the teasing.

He wrote:

The accident comes in many forms. I have never been crucified, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t experienced my share of mishaps. What Alice Cooper never told us is that some of us who are considered lazy or dumb or cowardly for abstaining from real accidents are actually none of those things. For the ones like us, life is just one big accident. Anyway, Alice Cooper’s real name was Vincent Damon Fournier. Fuck him, and fuck his crucifixion. Ronnie James Dio never died, so why did Alice? His real name was Ronnie James Padavona, but that is such a better name that Vincent Damon Fournier.

Ronnie James is immortal. He knows what it means to be the underdog. In the music video for Holy Diver, he teaches us more about life than Alice Cooper’s crappy crucifixion ever will. In Ronnie, I find strength. I know that someday I will also ride the tiger.

Overexcited and absorbed in his work, Danny raised both hands in classic devil horns and shouted, “Dio, motherfuckers!”

For this, he was promptly dismissed from the classroom. In the small-minded world of Heavy Metal High, everybody hated Dio. The history books brainwashed students. They claimed Dio’s entire career was a scourge to metal history, especially his time as Black Sabbath front man. Danny knew better. Heaven and Hell, Mob Rules, and Dehumanizer were all classic albums. In fact, he hated most non-Dio Sabbath material. He thought Ozzy Osbourne was an ass goblin.

He stood outside the classroom, counting cigarette burns on the black door. Somebody had graffitied a poor rendition of Skeletor. After USA Network stopped airing He-Man and the Masters of the Universe in 1990, Skeletor took a demotion from Evil Lord of Destruction to head honcho of Heavy Metal High’s security staff. He was a wrathful tactician, often tempting students to commit crimes that would have otherwise gone uncommitted.

Dean Hellfrost had already threatened to fire him three times this year for the brutal punishments he frequently dealt to innocent students. Rape and pillage may have been effective in his quest to conquer Eternia, but they provided a less than ideal backdrop for the academic environment.

Danny sniggered at the image on the door. The graffiti artist had stenciled two gargoyles jabbing their penises into Skeletor’s eye sockets. At the bottom, in crimson scrawl, one word: SKELEFUCKED.

Fortunately, Danny always managed to avoid encounters with Skeletor. He’d heard rumors about what the head security guard did to werewolves, and being turned into lycanthropic meatloaf by a megalomaniacal skeleton ranked very low on his list of things to do before he died.

The bell rang, startling Danny, forcing a hairball of worry out of his mouth. He scampered away, hiccupping and coughing up hairballs all the way to his next class.

Fourth period meant English, Danny’s favorite subject.

Seniors spent their final year of English studying the complete works of Marquis de Sade, but Danny’s teacher had fallen sick the week before and they’d had the same substitute since Monday. The substitute was a G.G. Allin impersonator. Whenever a student asked a question about their readings, the substitute pulled at his reverse Hitler mustache and said, “The Marquis can bite it.”

Today, Danny arrived before any of his peers. The Allin impersonator was naked and slumped over the teacher’s desk, a syringe in his arm, a dead roman candle dangling from his asshole.

Danny sat as far from the substitute as possible and read the words on the blackboard. Write a ballad to honor the memory of Moose Elwood. Don’t turn it in. Nobody wants to read your crap.

Considering the substitute probably couldn’t spell his own name, Danny figured another teacher must have slipped in and written this on the board.

Most of the kids showed up a few minutes after the late bell. Being on time hardly mattered when the only authority figure was a junky.

Barbetta took the seat beside Danny. He glanced over.

Streaks of mascara ran down to her chin. His heart thudded. A girl as beautiful as Barbetta would never fall for a werewolf like Danny. The only other werewolves at Heavy Metal High took up space in the special education pro-gram, and although he only resembled them in physical appearance, everyone made the same cruel jokes about him. No, they made crueler jokes about Danny.

As she did in first period, Barbetta passed a note to Danny. He undid the pentagram-folded paper and flattened it against his desk. Need help with your accident?