Jeff Strand - A Bad Day for Voodoo

Gary quickly decided that he didn’t like getting yelled at all day. He wanted to be the one yelling at people who weren’t responsible for what they were getting yelled at for.

He vowed that he would work hard and rise through the ranks until he acquired the power he so desperately sought.

On his second day, when a server named Tom yelled at him because the customer complained about the insufficient intensity of tomato flavor in the lasagna, Gary hit Tom in the face with a large metal spoon and stormed out of the building, never to return to the restaurant business again.

Gary went to his parents and proposed the idea that instead of following the original plan of getting a job, he would pursue an alternate course of action where he did not get a job. Their counterproposal was a simple and straightforward scenario in which he did get a job immediately, perhaps something in retail.

Gary Sheck did not enjoy working retail.

On his second day, after an elderly woman waited until he’d completely rung up and bagged her purchases to reveal that she had a twenty-five-cents-off coupon, Gary raised his fist and was immediately fired. He walked home, unsure of whether he would have punched the old lady in the face or not.

The unanswered question really bothered him, so he walked around until he found another old lady, and then he punched her in the face.

That was infinitely more satisfying than owning an Italian restaurant.

After a few days of soul searching, Gary realized that his opportunities for hurting more people would be greatly increased if he focused on doing jobs that were illegal. He started with petty crimes—a mugging here, a grand theft auto there—and then, on his eighteenth birthday, as a present to himself, he shot a man.

It wasn’t as much fun as he had thought it was going to be. The man died too quickly.

The next one took a lot longer. Gary was in a cheery mood for nearly three hours after that.

He joined a gang called Autopsy Report. By age twenty-five, he was their leader. He decided that Autopsy Report sounded more like the name of a band than a gang and changed it to the Maulers. He got reports that people were confusing it with “the Mallers” and assuming that their turf of terror was limited to shopping malls, so he changed it to the Red Shredders.

Gary knew that to instill fear in his enemies, he needed a trademark. So he became known for bashing his enemies to death with a brick. He was good at it.

By the time Gary was thirty, the Red Shredders had disbanded, but Gary and his five most loyal members stuck together and continued to commit crimes. Gary preferred crimes that were violent or at least destructive, but sometimes he settled for profitable, as with his lucrative auto-theft operation.

Gary was furious at the moment, because he’d told Scorp (the nickname for Scorpion, whose real name was Fred) not to bring in any more of these annoying, sensible, fuel-efficient cars. Scorp had apologized but didn’t seem to really mean it, and he giggled when he told Gary how he’d stolen it from a teenage kid, and the kid’s mom had called, and Scorp had told her the kid was dead.

Gary had to admit that that was pretty funny. Still, Scorp had disobeyed an order, so Gary threw him to the ground and kicked him in the side a few times.

Then they went to work dismantling the car.

“Hold up, hold up,” said Gary, waving for everybody to be quiet. “Did you hear that?”

Shark (real name: Trevor), Blood Clot (Charles), Ribeye (also Charles) and Scorp all went silent.

“Somebody’s knocking!”

Shark hurried over to the garage door and looked through the peephole. “Are you kidding me?”

“Is it the cops?” asked Blood Clot, who had never murdered a police officer but hoped to someday.

“Naw,” said Shark. “It’s a teenage kid.”

“For real?” asked Scorp. “Blond hair?”

“Yeah.”

Scorp let out a high-pitched laugh. “That’s the kid I stole it from! Can you believe that?”

“You think that’s funny?” asked Gary. “You lead him right back here to us, and you think it’s something to laugh about? You gonna laugh in jail? Huh? You gonna have a nice big chuckle in jail?”

Scorp had received three separate black eyes (not that he had three eyes; his right eye had been blackened once and his left twice) and a cracked rib from answering Gary’s rhetorical questions, so he said nothing.

Gary took out his gun. Ribeye and Blood Clot did the same. “All right,” said Gary. “Let him in.”

I didn’t know any of that when the garage door slid open. All I knew was that a big, frightening man grabbed me by the arm and pulled me inside, and then the garage door slammed shut, and then I had five guns pointed at me.

CHAPTER 10

Before this moment, the most guns I’d ever had pointed at me was one, and that was during the carjacking a few minutes ago. I wouldn’t say that this was necessarily five times scarier, but it was at least three or four times scarier.

None of the criminals looked happy to see me.

I said the first thing that came to mind: “I’m not a cop!”

For a few seconds, they all just stared at me. Then Gary (who I did not yet know was Gary—I simply thought of him as muscular guy with goatee, black hair, and cruel eyes) chuckled. Scorp chuckled right after that, and they were quickly followed by Blood Clot, Shark, and Ribeye. Their chuckles never quite reached full-fledged laughter, nothing like what you’d see in a movie where the bad guys are all having a nice big guffaw, but they were all clearly amused by my comment.

“Not a cop, huh?” asked Gary. “They hiring a lot of terrified- looking teenage boys as cops these days?”

“I’m just saying.. .I’m not, y’know, wearing a wire or anything.” “Well, good.” Gary patted me on the shoulder. “Good to

know. Because I’ve gotta say, when you came in here, I thought they’d sent in the marines.”

The other guys chuckled some more.

I glanced over at my mom’s car. The tires had already been removed, as had both doors. These guys were scumbag thieves, but I had to admire their efficiency. The trunk remained intact. “What’s your name?” Gary asked.

“Tyler.”

“Tyler what?”

“Tyler Churchill.”

“Well, Tyler Churchill, would you mind explaining to me exactly why the hell you knocked on our door?”

My mouth went completely dry, and it was difficult to speak. “You stole my mom’s car.”

“I stole nothing of the sort. I’ve been here all evening. Do you know what I do to people who falsely accuse me of wrongdoing?” I shook my head.

He pressed the barrel of the gun against my forehead. “You can make an educated guess, right?”

I forced myself not to drop to my knees and start sobbing and begging for mercy. They hadn’t opened fire on me with all five guns the second I stepped into their chop shop, so he had to be willing to discuss things.

I wondered if, possibly, this had been a bad idea.

“I didn’t mean you,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. I halfpointed to Scorp. “He took the car. It’s.. .uh.. .right there.”

“Oh, okay. You’re saying that my associate stole your car. That’s different. I agree with that. How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“You packin’?”

“Heat?”

Gary looked at me as if glowing waves of stupidity were emanating from my forehead. “Yes, heat. Are you packing heat? Are you in possession of a firearm containing bullets with which you might try to shoot somebody?”

I vigorously shook my head.

“Ribeye, pat him down.”