Sam Pink - Witch Piss

Spider-Man had a small electronic keycard thing on his necklace chain and he swiped it on a small display in front of the register.

He got points with purchases.

He checked his points on the screen, scrolling through what he could get for 70 points.

At 100, he got a travel coffee container.

He expressed interest in the travel container, but — as he showed me with more scrolling — for 15,000 points, he got 2 hours for him and 20 friends to ride around in the company van drinking Slushees.

It was called ‘The Brain Freeze Package.’

“Me, you — fuckin anybody,” he said. “We drive around drinking as many Slushees as we can handle man, shiiiit, you in?”

“You’re never going to get 15,000 points,” I said, paying the cashier. “Never.”

He laughed. “Fuckin A. Fuckin bananas.”

He grabbed the cigarettes and started packing them.

We walked back to the alley and leaned on the hoods of rental cars, drinking our 40s.

There was a gang tag on a train track column.

Spider-Man tapped it with his 40 and talked about how gangbangers were pussies now.

“Straight bullshit, man, fuckatta here. Stealin and killin in your own neighborhood? What!? Are you high? Should be protecting your neighborhood — protecting your city.”

He talked about how he gangbanged for the Insane Deuces when he was younger and how a rival in the Simon City Royals shot and killed three of his friends.

“Little scrawny ass motherfucker with a gun, man,” he said. “We didn’t play that gun shit back in the day, man. Hayo nah.” He got off the car and paced around, waving his hand and shaking his head. He stopped and pointed at me, “That shit was pussy shit, man. You used your hands, or a bottle, or chain, bat, knife. No guns.” He grabbed his bent-up nose and said, “Where you think I got this? Or this”—lifting up his shirt and showing me some stab wounds.

So he and two guys from different gangs — the Latin Kings and the Maniac Latin Disciples — got together and killed the guy who shot his friends.

They found out where he lived and attacked him on his back porch.

Spider-Man made punching and kicking motions.

His tophat wobbled and swayed.

A train was coming.

He seemed to remember something.

“Oh man,” he said, and touched his face, grimacing, “That shit….”

He walked over to the concrete foundation of a train track column.

As a train went by overhead — cancelling all sound — he made a motion as if pounding the guy’s face into the concrete over and over, yelling something.

He bent down at the knees a little and motioned with both his hands.

The train was gone.

“Then I grabbed that motherfucker by the throat,” he said, teeth clenched. “I choked the shit out him. He was blue, totally blue, couldn’t fucking make a sound. You kiddin me? And I said, ‘You remember Buddy? Psycho? Cowboy? Huh?’ He kept tryna to breathe, but the blood was all over. And I said, ‘Fuck you.’”

He made a motion like he was dropping the guy, kicking his head one last time.

They left him dead on his back porch, strangled, his head smashed in.

“Me and the other du’s, we hooked em up,” Spider-Man said, gesturing like him and two other people were making a triangle with their arms, “We made the triangle, bing bing, and everybody left.” He walked a few steps one way, pointing—“One guy went this way.” Then he walked a different direction, pointing. “Another guy went this way.” He pointed a different way, “I went this way. Never saw either of them again. And I don’t regret it, man. Hayo nah I don’t.”

Janet rolled up right as her battery died.

“Shit, dayum. Fock dat. Heh.”

“Ey, there she is,” Spider-Man said.

She was soaked, wearing a candy necklace.

Said she’d been at Troy’s, and that Troy had given her the candy necklace.

Spider-Man grabbed the necklace and kept trying to bite it but she slapped at his hand.

“Shut up, beb,” she said. “Um, can I’ve a cigarette, peez?”

Spider-Man put a cigarette in her mouth and lit it for her.

I watched Janet smoke her cigarette, her head wobbling — saying, “Shit, damn, fock dat” on repeat as Spider-Man bit off pieces of her necklace and made suggestions about what he’d do to Troy if Troy stole her from him.

Things with scissors.

Things with bricks.

Look out, Troy!

Janet kept saying, “Ok, ok. Shut up, beb.”

She went to flick her cigarette and it fell into her lap, burning her sweatpants.

Spider-Man told her to drop her cigarettes off to the side and not try any ‘fancy flickin things.’

He kept grabbing her hand.

“Over here, ok!?” he said. “Over here!”

“Ok, ok,” she said, trying to pull her hand back.

We stood around drinking, listening to the swish of rush hour traffic in the rain.

The trains above, more frequent, each time sending down older rainwater off the tracks onto my head and neck and back.

An ambulance and firetruck passed with sirens on.

Spider-Man jogged out to the edge of the alley and checked their identifying numbers.

“Both of them #3,” he said. “That’s over on Shakespeare and California. Right by where my mom used to live.”

He talked about how his mom used to make cookies every Sunday for the firemen and policemen.

Firemen and policemen would line up at her house on Sunday to get a cookie.

“She’d draw em like pigeons,” Spider-Man said. “Man, one time—”

But then he started crying.

He walked away a little, pinching his eyes.

Then he came back and told a story about firemen stopping traffic when he and his mom were walking home from the grocery store, to get out and hug him and his mom.

Janet said how they used to live with Spider-Man’s mom, and how much they loved each other.

“She, um, change my diaper. I say, ‘You no have to do it, Janny be back soon.’ But she, didda for me. I, wuh was embarrass, because no one see my, my privates. My, um, vuh—”

She looked at Spider-Man.

“Vagina,” he said, sniffing. “Yes, that’s what you have.”

Janet looked back and me. “Um, yeah, my vagina. Heh. Shit.”

Spider-Man was still crying, looking to the side and shaking his head.

But then he ate a few more pieces off Janet’s candy necklace and seemed to feel better.

He checked the time on his phone and asked if I could push Janet to the library.

He wanted to go to the library to charge all their stuff before they left the next day.

I handed Janet my 40 and tucked her stuffed animals more securely into the back pouch of her wheelchair.

I pushed her out of the alley and onto the sidewalk.

It was raining hard again.

We were completely wet in seconds.

Janet joked about stealing my drink.

“I gonna, heh, I gonna, steal it,” she said, holding the 40 closer to herself.

“Don’t steal it,” I said.

She laughed and said, “I luh, luff you.”

I pinched rain out of my nose. “Yeah?”

She quietly said, “No, I mean it. I do.”

When we got to the library, I parked her underneath the front entrance overhang.

Spider-Man came running up, wheeling the luggage.

“Oohweee,” he said, shaking off.

He took off his tophat and slapped it a few times.

He put their luggage beneath some bushes, setting the sleepingbags under the overhang.

I sat down crosslegged and drank my 40.

Janet took out her stuffed animals and petted them.

We hung out drinking until really late, talking about what they had to do when they got to Las Vegas, playing trivia, yelling at people who walked by in costumes, trying to throw our bottlecaps against each other, pissing in the bushes, laughing.