Craig Davidson - The Fighter

“… Asset allocation… Cohiba coronas and their impact on bistro culture…”

A wave of cold nausea ripped through Paul’s guts. The room lurched, its reds and whites transposing so that, for an instant, the spackled ceiling became an expanse of curdled blood. An intense loathing welled up at the sight of these sons and daughters of privilege. He saw them all lying facedown in the mud with slugs riven through their skulls. He saw their bodies heaped pell-mell in a mass grave with a dusting of quicklime eating their bones. He saw them not as bodies but as vague unformed shapes, featureless faces smooth as eggshell.

“…Cambodian sweatshop sanctions… tennis elbow…”

Then Drake’s body swelled and bloated until his face tore in two like sun-rotted fatback to reveal the head of a massive quivering maggot. Paul’s eyes went big; he choked, averting Drake’s gaze, and saw that all the children had turned into maggots. Giant greasy tubes sheathed in Donna Karan dresses with nautilus-whorl hairdos and redwood-framed glasses and clutch purses, tubes peristaltic-flexing across the lush white carpeting. A guest leaned down and kissed his maggot-daughter and his lips came away with taffy pulls of mucus clinging to them. A guest fed her maggot-son a stuffed olive canapé, fingers disappearing into the dilated asshole of its mouth. Drake the Maggot stood on its tail like a cartoon worm, body curled like an S and, revoltingly, it continued to speak.

“…white-chocolate truffles..Maggot-Drake said. “… Jerry’s Kids..

The puckered balloon-knot of Maggot-Drake’s mouth blurped and blorped and spewed snotlike goo that stuck to Paul’s face like gobs of gelatin.

“ Yakka-yakka-yakka,” Maggot-Drake laughed, “Hohohohohoho HOOO !”

Paul’s own hysterical laughter ricocheted off the walls, so deafening all other conversations ground to a halt as he gagged HO-HO-HO like a demented Pere Noel. The toilet-paper plugs rocketed from his nose and his body quaked and the television fire crackled and Rita MacNeil sang “O Tannenbaum” — Paul punched Maggot-Drake in its butthole mouth. His arm sunk in to the elbow and Drake’s maggot body went sssssss, deflating like a ruptured parade balloon. Paul blinked and there was Drake Langley, crumpled up on the hearth.

The DVD skipped. The TV fire went black.

Paul sat on the back porch. He’d broken Drake’s jaw. The sound of young Drake moaning, the sight of those strings of saliva dribbling from his unhinged puppet-mouth — it spoiled the seasonal joie de vivre. The party broke up quickly, despite Socialite Barb’s best efforts: “Please, everything’s fine! Let’s all roast chestnuts!”

He’d watched Drake Langley transform into a maggot. The Vicodin Sandercott had given him — blotter acid? That, or he’d gone temporarily delusional. At this point, either scenario struck him as completely possible.

His father joined him with a bottle of scotch. “Well, thank god that kid’s dad isn’t the litigious type.” He sat, took a pull from the bottle, and set it between his legs. “Maybe I should consider it lucky you didn’t punch him, too.”

“It may end up being the best thing anyone’s ever done for him.”

“You know,” Jack said, peevishly, “most people who get beat up aren’t changed for it. Blake will ice his jaw tonight and go to work in the morning.”

“His name is Drake.”

“I’ve been calling him Blake for years. Drake. Isn’t that a sort of bird?”

Another gulp. “So why’d you do it?”

Alas, dear Drake had turned into a quivering blubbery maggot .

“How’s Mom?”

“How would you figure?”

Paul reached between his father’s legs for the bottle. Inside, some china shattered.

“I should sleep somewhere else tonight.”

“Tonight? Think more like a week,” said Jack. “So, figured out how all this is benefiting you yet?” When Paul said nothing his father persisted.

“Why you’re decking party guests?”

Paul took a swig. If there was one thing he missed lately, it was good scotch.

“Dad, did you ever think, even for one fleeting moment, that maybe I didn’t want the life you’d staked out for me?”

Jack looked like he’d been knifed in the guts. “Staked out for you? Is that what you think? I only wanted you to be happy. I wanted you to go to a good school — you did. I wanted you to go to university — you did. I wanted you to work at a job you’d be happy with…” He trailed off, confused. “I thought you’d found that.” Jack slugged scotch, breathed deep, another slug. “But… you never showed the slightest ambition. Sports, academics, jigsaw puzzles, ships in bottles — nothing.”

“Fair point. I’m a late bloomer.”

“Blooming into what? Into something that belongs up in a friggin’ bell tower. Jesus, and now you’re…” Jack hung his head.“… bleeding.”

Paul wiped under his nose; his fingers came away bloody. He thought about the cleanliness of Sandercott’s instruments and considered the prospect of staph infection.

“So this is all my fault?” Jack went on. “You’re blaming me?”

“Give me a break. Self-pity doesn’t suit you.”

“I’m drunk.” More shattering noises from inside. “And in a few minutes I have to go deal with that. So let me wallow, will you?”

Paul softened. “It’s not your fault. I don’t think you gave it any thought, is all. You had a sense of how things should be, and I didn’t make any waves, so…”

“And this is how you want it?”

“I’m happier.”

“No you’re not. You just think you are.”

Inside: stomping, another crash.

“Good thing I got a snootful to keep me warm,” Jack said dourly. “Conjugal bed’s bound to be a mite frosty tonight.”

His father went inside. Raised voices, a spectacularly loud crash, what might or might not have been weeping. Paul shivered, coming down from the adrenaline buzz.

“That was quite a performance.”

It was Callie, his father’s receptionist. She wore a puffy parka over a peach blouse, short black skirt, nylons.

She sat on the porch stairs. The smoke from her menthol cigarette mingled with the smell of jasmine perfume. “Haven’t seen you around the office. Jack thinks you’re having a breakdown. Quarter-life crisis.”

He reached out, suddenly, and set his hand on her face. She didn’t flinch; her eyes did not release from his. He ran his thumb down the center of her face to her chin. Convinced she was not liable to split apart as Drake had, he let out a shuddering breath and smiled.

“What was that all about?”

Paid brushed her question off. “What do you think?” he said. “Am I having a breakdown?”

“I can’t say, exactly. You’re… different. You’ve changed. Definitely.”

“For the better?”

“I think so.” The rapid beat of her heart pulsed her neck vein. “You really popped that poor guy. Never seen anyone hit so hard. It was… wow.”

She butted her cigarette on the porch steps, leaning over to do so. Her blouse was sheer and low-cut, her breasts just bigger than medium and firm. They were about the most beautiful tits Paul had ever seen. This was his first sexual stirring since his steroid cycle began and it broiled through his veins in a galvanizing, all-consuming, full-barrel rush. She studied him with a knowing half-smile, a few wisps of cigarette smoke curling from the sides of her lips.

The two of them in the greenhouse with its long dusty tables, trowels, and boxes of expired slug poison. Paul’s hands clutched at Callie’s ass as she bit his lower lip, small pink tongue slicing the gaps between his teeth. He tore her blouse off, buttons popping, his hands and mouth on her tits, groping her with all the subtlety of an orangutan. Their bodies glanced off the glass; a pane fractured in spiderweb cracks. She tugged his fly down and jerked his cock, her strong farm-girl hands pulling so hard it was as if she were trying to yank a stubborn weed; he shook her hand away and crushed his mouth to hers with such force he thought their teeth would splinter. They maneuvered amid sacks of cacao shells and blood-and-bone meal; Paul’s toe struck the old Bowflex and he bellowed like a gorgon. She moaned unintelligible words as he picked her up and dropped her on bags of peat, the white plastic splitting in puffs of dust, and when their lips met again they could taste the earthy grit of it on their tongues.