Cameron Pierce - Abortion Arcade

Danny gulped. He looked over at Barbetta. She winked at him. He took out his pen. He didn’t know what to say.

She hardly acknowledged that he existed. Why suddenly offer to help him now? It’s all planned out. Nobody will believe what I’m gonna do , he lied.

When Barbetta returned the note, he looked around the room. Most of the students appeared to be absorbed in completing the assignment. Apparently, Moose’s death shook them so badly that they would do anything, even schoolwork, to honor the fallen hero.

Sexy!

Danny rubbed his eyes to ensure that he wasn’t seeing wrong, that Barbetta had really written s-e-x-y in her girly scrawl. He slipped on his headphones. Rainbow’s Run with the Wolf, from the ’76 album Rising, filled his fuzzy ears. He stared at the note until the lunch gong sounded.

Sexy!

Danny was zipping up his backpack in the crowded hall, his brown lunch sack clenched between his teeth, when Barbetta approached.

He flung his backpack over his shoulders and squeezed the paper bag in his hands to prevent the nervous tremors running through him. He worried that his fur might look uncombed, but wasn’t it always uncombed? No one ever approached Danny with anything nice to say. He figured Barbetta wanted to tell him not to ruin the football season, at least for the sake of her dead boyfriend.

“Hi,” she said, flipping hair out of her face.

“How are you?” Danny said. “I mean, after Moose’s accident.”

Barbetta shrugged. “We all have to die sometime.”

“You seemed pretty upset earlier.”

“I never pass up an opportunity for a good cry. I like drama.”

“You mean you like acting?”

“You’re not very bright, are you?”

“I guess that’s what you wanted to tell me.”

“Not at all! I want to show you something. I’m sure the accident you’re planning is great, but I think this will help.”

Danny blushed. He wanted to confess that he had nothing planned, that he desperately needed Barbetta’s assistance. Alone, he was a hopeless cause. “Everything will work out fine without you. I have everything I need. It’s going to be awesome, thanks.”

He started to turn away, his stomach growling at the thought of the pork fries and sausage sandwich in his lunch sack.

“Don’t bullshit me,” Barbetta said. “If you fuck up tonight, the other kids will crucify you, and Skeletor will do something even worse. You need me.”

“Won’t the rest of the cheer squad miss you?”

Barbetta sighed and took him by the mane. She pulled him further from the yard where students ate lunch, away from the drone of a shitty black metal band.

She led him into an open classroom and locked the door behind them.

She pressed against Danny and puckered her lips for a kiss. Unfortunately for Danny, he reacted in the way all werewolves do when confronted with unexpected closeness: he bit.

He pulled away from her.

He spit Barbetta’s face onto the floor. She raised her hands to her bloody skull and moaned. Danny picked chunks of flesh and hair from between his fangs. He had never felt so humiliated in his life.

Something was lodged in the back of his throat. He coughed. Barbetta’s nose plopped to the ground. “I’m so sorry.” He reached for her but then withdrew, tucking his hands in his pockets, afraid to touch her. “Let me take you to the health center.”

“My face!”

Danny backed against the door. Surely the school would sentence him to death for mangling the lead cheerleader. “I’m sure they can put it back on.”

“I’ve always wanted to see my skull,” Barbetta said, still hiding her new face from Danny. “Reach into my purse and fetch my mirror. I want to know how I look.”

No girl had ever asked Danny to get something out of her purse. It seemed an intimate thing to do. Her purse lay beside her face flesh. He picked up the purse and pulled out a mirror studded with pink and black jewels. “Here you go,” he said.

Barbetta took the mirror. Danny grimaced as she removed her hands from her face to inspect herself. “I am finally beautiful,” she said.

“I always thought you were beautiful,” Danny said, although he liked her much better when flesh covered her skull. “What was it you wanted to show me?”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter anymore,” she tilted her head to inspect herself from a different angle, “I’m sure your accident will be wonderful. I never dreamed a man, er—werewolf, would bite my face off. It’s so fucking sexy.”

Danny swallowed back vomit. Whatever ointments or makeup had covered Barbetta’s face were making him sick.

He wanted to run out of the classroom but realized what a lifetime opportunity he’d been thrown.

Barbetta took her purse from Danny and scooped her face off the floor. She stuck her face and mirror in the purse and grinned fiendishly. “I’ll make you a deal.”

“W-what kind of deal?”

She ran a finger down the center of his jersey. “If you beat Old Time tonight, I’ll give you the time of your life after the game.”

“T-that’s very kind of you—” but Barbetta pushed around him and left him alone in the classroom, where he stayed for the remainder of lunch, eating his sausage sandwich and pork fries, contemplating the terrible fortune life had suddenly thrown his way.

Biology and Facial Education passed without any notable disasters, except that he definitively failed a pop quiz on the tongue of Gene Simmons. Nobody spoke to Danny and he didn’t spot Barbetta in the hall between classes. He felt everyone watching him and whispering behind his back. Of course, they anticipated his accident. He considered visiting Doom McCray, his head coach, or an academic counselor for advice, but he knew they would tell him the same old thing… how conceiving a wreck is a personal matter and any advice from staff members made the school liable in the event of death. He needed to pull himself up by the bootstraps. He didn’t want to conjure any doubt about his ability to lead Heavy Metal High to victory.

After seventh period, Danny walked out to the bus lot and got on bus #34. He plopped down in an empty seat near the front. The faux leather scorched his back and thighs. Although the school bus had no air conditioning, Danny preferred the heat to the company of his peers and the brooding ferocity of his father. Along the ride, he listened to Elf, the gods of blues rock and Ronnie James’ first band.

Dan Sr. was a sullen man and a drunk. He wrote for the sports page of the local paper and occasionally picked up freelance work. When Danny’s mother died of breast cancer during his freshman year, Dan Sr. lost all interest in his son. He made arrangements with the paper to write his articles from home, which he did during the four or five hours he managed to stay sober each day. Since Danny typically arrived home around four, he had not seen his father sober on a school day in three years.

But when he walked through the door on this unusual Friday, his father greeted him with a big lycanthropic hug.

Danny detected no alcohol on his father’s clothes or breath.

“Dean Hellfrost called me this morning. Congratulations, son. I always knew you’d be a champ.” His fur smelled sour, his liver was probably too damaged to ever be repaired, but at least he was alive for this moment.

“But dad, I—”

“Take it to state,” the sallow, yellow-haired werewolf marched around the living room, “take it to state, my boy!”

Danny tried to recall the last time he saw his father so animated. It saddened him to think that he would shrink back into alcoholic despair if Heavy Metal lost the game.