Adam Levin - The Instructions

Dropping his chair before he arrived, Leevon punted into Botha’s stomach. Botha curled fetal and Leevon stepped over him, kicked him in the tailbone, straightened him out.

We stood there, watching the monitor writhe. He rolled onto his back and onto his stomach then onto his back and onto his stomach, crossing his legs and twisting his hips to guard his nuts against phantom wallops. His claw, draped over his face, didn’t hide much. Involuntary muscular actions — overwrought blinking, jumping neck tendon, his forehead wrinkling, his forehead smoothing, his mustache twitching above his pursing then slackening then pursing lips — were manifest.

“Not brilliant, Botha,” Vincie told him.

I tore the keyring off Botha’s belt loop and righted the nearest chair. I’d thought I’d stand on it, but once I got it righted, I didn’t feel so worked up. I was glad for what had happened, but it had been so easy. The Monitor had been delivered into our hands. Standing on a chair to shout about it seemed chomsky.

I sat, cleared my throat.

Who did this? I said to the Side of Damage.

About half of them looked at their feet.

Who did this? I said again.

“No one,” they said.

But who did this? I said.

“Everyone,” they said.

They wanted to give me the right answer and they didn’t know what it was. They were scared to ask me.

I did this, I said.

“I did this,” they said.

I did this, I said.

“You did this,” they said.

Good, I said. Who’s got a knife?

No one said anything.

I said, What’s for lunch today, Jelly?

“Medallions of venison.”

Get your knife, I told her, and cut the straps off some backpacks.

Boshka, Chunkstyle, and Nakamook volunteered theirs.

Pick some guys and drag the Monitor into the bathroom, I told the Flunky. I said, Hog-tie him when Jelly brings the straps.

“How we gonna hog-tie him?” the Flunky said.

“Like a hog, foog,” said Nakamook.

“The claw,” said the Flunky.

“My bad,” said Benji.

I said, Take his claw off first, and three-quarter hog-tie him. When you’re done with that, tie him to the radiator.

The Flunky deputized his brother and Dingle. Ronrico got in on it, too.

Botha kept mumbling. I pulled his cellphone — a flip — from its holster, put it in my pocket.

Give us your claw, Ronrico told him.

Lowering his eyes, Botha said, “Demmeged,” ≠ “I can’t detach my prosthesis with these broken phalanges,” but might as well have.

Benji did a zippo trick I’d never seen before. He held the lighter sideways in his lefthand and snapped the fingers of his right hand, which opened the lid and sent the lighter falling end-over-end. The wheel scraped Botha’s forehead, which sparked the flint so the flame arose as the lighter slid down Botha’s temple. It landed right-side-up, an inch from his face, flickering. “Once you’re hog-tied,” Benji said, “I’m gonna set you on fire.” He grabbed and closed the zippo with a single swipe of his hand, arm so long he barely bent to do it. Then he placed his foot on Botha’s shattered shoulder, but didn’t lay his weight down. Botha stuttered moans and twitched more.

“He thinks I’m gonna set him on fire,” Benji said to us.

Botha stammered, “I’m… demmeged.”

“The monitor says he wants to join the Side of Damage,” Vincie announced.

Nearly everyone laughed at that — some from the belly and most from somewhere else. Leevon, who wasn’t one of the laughers, knelt beside Botha and whispered something I couldn’t make out. Botha mumbled more.

“I said stop talkin ,” Leevon said. He rose to his feet, as if to walk away. Instead he kicked Botha’s teeth in.

Kids sucked air. Leevon did a hop, holding his toes. Botha’s crotch was wet.

“You see that?” Vincie said to Ben-Wa.

Ben-Wa, crying, knelt where Leevon had, measured out the shot and hammered Botha’s nose flat.

The blood shot out, puddling on his chin. Spit blew off his lips and, with eyes shut tight, he turned his head flinchingly, over and over, left-right-left, dodging big punches that no one was throwing as sticky-looking strings, like rope fed through portholes, wormed from his nostrils and swung.

Renne Feldbons puked. Ansul Entsry crossed himself. Forrest Kenilworth puked and hail-Maryed twice. Most of the laughter transformed into weeping, and as it did I started laughing. I wasn’t laughing at their fear or remorse or anything else they felt. I wasn’t laughing at anyone’s pain, but their timing. We had broken the man’s one good hand and we had broken the shoulder of the arm opposite that hand and, except for Ben-Wa Wolf, who cried about everything, no one had shed any tears. Compared to being maimed, a broken nose and missing teeth were mere cosmetic difficulties, yet the formerly laughing weepers didn’t weep til the nose got broken and the teeth went missing. They didn’t weep until the gore bubbled up. Even soldiers on the Side of Damage required actual, bright red blood to spill before they could see things for what they were, and if that wasn’t funny then I didn’t want to know what it was.

“We’re fucked,” someone said. “We’re so fucked now.”

“ Yeah we’re fucked,” said Vincie Portite, “and that’s why we’re so fucken dangerous .”

Brandishing the keyring, I leaned at the Monitor. Which lock what? I said.

“We’re going to prison!” somebody shouted. “We’re getting expelled!”

Botha stopped twitching and started to enumerate, key by key. White-capped key, Cage door; orange cap, gate…

“We’re so fucken dead!” “What’ll we do? Look what we did!”

“‘What’ll we do ?’” Benji Nakamook said. “We’ll go to the gym . ‘Look what we did ?’ We haven’t done fuck -all. We’ve barely even started.”

“We’re not asking you, Benji!”

Blue was the copy room, purple the teachers lounge…

“We gotta settle scores,” said Ronrico Asparagus.

“No one’s asking you, either!”

“We’re the Side of fucken Damage.”

Red was the C-Hall faculty bathroom, green the front doors. The rest were all personal.

2-Hall gates? I said.

Botha shook his head.

Side entrance? I said.

He shut his eyes hard and shook his head faster.

I saw that I believed him. I sat up straight.

“We have to get it done,” Jelly Rothstein was saying, “before we get nailed, and before they’re all gone.”

And Ben-Wa Wolf kept saying, “Now or never.”

And “Fucked!” kids were saying. And “Gurion!” they said. “What can we do?” they said. “Look what we did!”

I said, You didn’t do this. I’m the one who did this, and if you want to go before I do more than this, a blessing on your head, but we can’t say goodbye before you get armed. I’m not leaving anyone who’s in here unarmed.

And as soon as we tied and locked down the prisoner, I brought the Side of Damage to the teachers lounge. On our way, we stripped C-Hall of all of its pep. Some crumpled streamers, others tore posters, others yet made confetti of flyers. Every last one of us grabbed a balloon.

April 11, 2007

Dear Mr. Maccabee,

Enclosed, on one DVD encoded in MPEG format, is the second draft of the Video-Sync (VS). I believe this draft will more accurately match your vision than did the first, though I recognize the likelihood that at least one more draft will be in order. Thus, in hopes of getting it right sooner rather than later, I’ve created an annotated transcript of the VS, 390 pages in length. I believe this annotated transcript will allow us to discuss any changes you might like to make with greater economy than we’ve formerly been able. The way I understand it, a large part of the problem we faced last time — though, admittedly, not the largest (see below) — was that we didn’t have an easy-reference guide to the available alternate footage. Now we do: The transcript not only notes — on a shot-to-shot basis — which of the 9 cameras’ footage is being used in the current draft of the VS, but what other footage is available for use in the next draft (i.e. which of the 9 cameras were shooting simultaneously), as well as the general nature of this alternate footage. (A guide to the notation used in the transcript appears at the end of this letter.)