Willy swerved his Ford Expedition into the parking lot entrance of the pub.
“Alright, here we are,” he said.
Spencer could see that the place was alive with commotion and energy that there were even people standing outside, holding their drinks, jawing and guffawing through words both coherent and incoherent. He saw as one of the barmaids held a tray over her shoulder full of drinks come outside to serve one of the parties.
“There's some big UFC event tonight,” Willy said. “Title fight, I forget who's fighting, though, or what weight class.”
“And they're showing it here?”
“Yep.”
Willy carefully settled his vehicle in the nearest available spot, set it in park, and shut the engine off. His hand held frozen on the ignition as a thought overcame him. He leaned in close to Spencer, motioning him to come forward in a discreet chat. The particular subject of this brief exchange instinctively told him to keep it cautiously under wraps although they were in the privacy of their own interior-soundproof automobile.
“You know,” he said, “this is like a rare occurrence that happens, what—every two-hundred years—when the planets align? Tonight is a night for all warriors—from everywhere, every culture, every race, every different story—to achieve their victories. One of those men is going to rip and tear their way through a triumphant victory tonight through bloodshed on this very same night, just like you.”
Spencer smirked and nodded.
“Not all of 'em get bloody, though,” he said.
Willy just stared at him.
“You're right. Tonight's a special night for a select special few, I guess.” Spencer said.
“You got that right, homie,” Willy said. “You ready to do this?”
He flipped the shotgun mirror down again to go over his appearance; everything seemed to be in check. Spencer drew one final breath and exhaled slowly. Fear was the real killer, as his elders always advised—did that still apply in this scenario? Tonight, he would be the embodiment of fear. He held a grip onto that attitude and looked into his own eyes in the mirror to tell himself the same thing.
Just don't fuck up. Plain and simple. Okay? Good.
Spencer nodded to himself, flipped the mirror back up and exited out of the vehicle into the loudly-chattering, tobacco-filtered-scented atmosphere that was the typical hoedown that any popular bar and grill had on a weekend airing a live sports event.
Wow, and they weren’t even inside the joint yet.
Willy came around the car to stand beside his friend as they looked ahead towards the pub. Spencer could never figure out how he could be so smoothly about it; right now the way he’d been dressed, usual baggy tan cargo shorts, New Balance walking shoes with short socks, long-sleeve dark gray shirt that repped the school they attended, with his professionally-styled short brown hair combed forward, he couldn't see how both their styles differed, yet he knew how to work well with everything—women, life in general, because he popped that cherry of his way back in his early youth just like he should have; now he'd been burdened throughout the best part of his life all because of his cowardice. He was lucky to have made Playboy Willy's acquaintance, despite his boorish, detracting behavior he had towards him when he'd be intoxicated or with his other country club chums.
Deep down, he was aware of the real problem, what distanced himself from the rest of the world. Could it really, seriously all blow to hell and disintegrate tonight?
Spencer squinted his eyes, shook it off and took another deep breath to try and regain that fortitude before he let it drift off, and tightened the screws that attached his head to his shoulders.
“Okay, here we go,” Willy said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Remember. Play your cards right, of course; respect her, compliment her shoes, blah blah blah, but metaphorically—deep down in the heart of this evening, the core of it, the heart of it—this night is all about your quest to get a hot chick into your clutches…”
He leaned into his ear to say the rest.
“…and have your way with her, as I will mine.”
Willy brought up a fist, knuckles outward for him to bump. Spencer complied with a smile of sheer uncertainty.
Willy looked back at the pub. “I think it was a mistake meeting here. I hope those dumb twats don't get themselves too tanked. It's important they're sober for this.”
Spencer took little (very little, a soft prick) offense to him degrading his date and he was unsure why. Perhaps it was similar with farmers and how they took offense if you snuck onto their property for some good fun ol' fashioned cow-tipping—tipping the same cattle they bred and fed for clothing and meat. He erased it and brought his attention back to the present.
“Are you sure about this place?” Spencer said quietly. “You’ve checked it out?”
Willy scoffed and shook his head, smiling.
“Bro, don’t waste a fucking second worrying about that,” Willy said. “I looked into it; it’s some old abandoned house that’s at least about a mile down from the highway and it’s on a farmland. Some couple abandoned it for some reason. I don’t know the details, but it’s been barren for some time now. There won’t be a soul anywhere within hearing range…unless you count a few owls and locusts or other nightcrawlers…and we both know they ain’t gonna say shit.” He let out a chortle.
“As long as you’re positive,” he said.
Spencer looked off into nothing again, envisioning how beautiful and how mesmerizing and how glorifying it was going to be, but regardless how small or how big it was, that chance—nevermind the percentage—was right there in his head threatening him, bullying him, developing a murky dark cloud over his morale. That voice of Spencer's rang in the hollows of his membrane.
Poison! It's all poison! Stop letting that shit creep back into your head! That's the real killer, don't you remember? Now do what Willy says, which is chill the fuck out and stop thinking that inane horseshit. Just stop it! Now!
The temperature in his blood broiled to a nice comforting simmer and he felt every nerve in his system relax. Finally he was going to relieve himself of this colossal famishing that had been aching from for so many years.
Now he was excited. He was looking forward to so many of the attributes that came with this practice: the feel of the rubber grip as it penetrated her; the blooming process—oh it was going to be breathtaking to see her bloom like a flower, her pedals turning inside out to reveal the gorgeous crimson sea within her that beckoned to be liberated, like a pearl in an oyster…
But if there would be only one element that he would ask for out of this ordeal, it would be the look. You can have Niagara Falls of blood, all the pleas and beggings and screams loud enough to be heard across the globe—but the one aspect that he could never bargain with, no matter what had been dangled in front of his face, was the expression; the most priceless factor in this ordeal.
The look in the face…the look in the eyes.
Willy shared the same desire. He could remember arriving at Calculus I on that Tuesday morning for his first semester, taking the first two-student desk that looked the most appealing to him; he showed up in plenty of time before everybody else because he wasn't one for mingling and errand-running in between classes, and the class one-by-one filed in. Then when he walked in, still laughing and joking loudly from a conversation out in the hall, he saw that whoever this fellow was was unarguably high in the pecking order. As soon as he left his pow-wow outside and finally walked in, he nodded and waved to familiar faces around the room with a smile, and saw the vacant seat next to him. He asked if it was cool if he could sit there in which Spencer answered “Sure.” The first day was pretty quiet between the two, and then a few days later, Willy cracked a joke about a topic the professor made. Spencer laughed and said something to improve it. Willy laughed with authentic amusement. His confidence boosted. After that, during the next few weeks, tried thinking up more witty humor in his dialogue throughout their conversations during class, sometime
s it was a hit and sometimes it was a miss, but regardless, Willy was beginning to take a liking to him.
After a month, it became official. They went from the innuendo to life in general. What road they were taking after school, what alternate career they were considering, what type of women they had an interest in, what cars, what movies, what interests, etcetera, etcetera. Willy and he would meet at the library mainly to study; they would go out during their break hour to Chili's or TGI-Friday's which was always fun. One day, Biology was cancelled and that was when Willy took him down to a strip club in Sauget, Illinois. He never imagined such a stench of sweat, nicotine and cheap perfume could hang so impossibly heavy; the women were average at best in the department of looks; the atmosphere and loud 80's metal music didn't agree with him and he would go so far as to say that if you walked into this strip club, you walked into them all. They walked out into the bright, blaring sun, frying their dark-adjusted eyes into blindness for a few prolonged seconds before they gained back vision and headed for Willy's back-then 2011 orange Lamborghini. “So what'd you think?” Willy asked. “It was cool.” Spencer replied with a clear lack of enthusiasm. Willy laughed and said, “Yeah, I know, man. This place is like a fucking poltergeist. I would have taken you to this other place, but you have to make an appointment first. Oh, my God, man, this place is incredible. Think of this place, but everything is five-star and the bitches there are young, Grade-A, Sports Illustrated swimsuit-model type chicks. I thought it was only possible for an actual hot girl to do this line of work in the fucking Red Light District over in Amsterdam! Dude, it's like—if this place right here were a Knight's Inn, the place I'm talking about right now is the fucking Ritz Carlton! Fuck that! I'm calling right now to reserve us some VIPs!” Willy flipped open his celly to do just that.
The reservations were booked for Friday night. Willy, Spencer and three more of Willy's friends all drove down in his Kia Sorento (he always had two different cars; he recently traded the Sorento for a new-model Expedition) east toward downtown. They arrived to their destination; from the outside Spencer's expectations had drastically lowered—a brick building, slummy neighborhood, shot-out traffic lights, weirdos robot-walking down the street...but Willy and his chronies had no change in attitude or vivacity as they all made their way towards the building. This should be interesting, thought Spencer. Willy knocked on the large metal door where there was a sliding peep door. It rolled open to reveal a pair of old, haggard eyes. “Yes?” he said. “Little strokes fell great oaks.” Willy said. “Name?” the stranger said. “Critchfield, party of five.” said Willy, Spencer managed to contain his laugh. “One moment please,” said the stranger before he slid the peep door shut. Spencer said, “Little oaks...what?” Willy said, “The password.” The large metal door opened to reveal a nicely-suited middle-aged fellow behind it. “Welcome to The Fountain of Youth.” he said.
They went inside, walked through a dark, cruddy, dull room with a staircase that went down. They followed the stranger down the staircase, where he had unlocked a double set of doors, he opened them up, and Spencer heard the choir of angels sing their heavenly hearts out at a powerful volume once he saw what was on the other side: a plethora of young, beautiful, stunning, healthy, intelligent fully-developed young women, dancing professionally on tables, on laps, drinking and guffawing with the clientele, who looked upper-class and pretty sophisticated themselves. And the place was enormous! The carpet, the furniture, the atmosphere, the sights, the sounds and the taste of the club was precisely what Willy had said before: this place was the Ritz compared to that cesspool Days Inn or whatever example he had used. The five young men sat at a table where they were soon afterwards accompanied by five lovely young escorts. Spencer's was a cute redhead named Fiona. There was chit-chat, drinks, more chit-chat, getting tipsy, then came the dancing. The buzz of the Whiskey Sours swimming through Spencer's vision loosened him to talk with a more open demeanor. He and Fiona sat a booth away from the party, him telling her all about his social-issues with people, his coyness in which Fiona flashed a look of surprise to and that he was handling himself just fine with her. She then took him by the hand, similar to the Sauget shithole, and thought to himself, Wait, I already got a lap dance. Where are we going? The two made their way to a room that amazingly resembled a five-star hotel room. Spencer was now speechless. A king-sized bed, two fine-oak nightstands on either side, a giant HDTV facing it. He was beginning to question if he and his friends had walked through a rip in the fabric of time, walking from a ghetto into a playboy paradise within a few feet.
Spencer saw the bed and did not give it much thought, then Fiona gently eased him to sit down on it, that was when he knew what was coming, and he couldn't restrain his spasming. He tried to make himself as stiff as he could, but it was because of that she knew something was up. “Are you alright?” she said. “Yeah,” he said, feeling his cheeks burning red. “I'm sorry, um, it's...sort of my first time.” Fiona laughed. “You'd be surprised how many guys in their forties or fifties come in here saying the same thing.” Spencer furrowed his brow, in the midst of his violent jerking. Fiona eased him down onto his back, gently climbing on top of him, straddling him, soothingly-shushing him. “It's okay. I'm not gonna bite...too hard...” she said through a succulent, seductive, breathtaking smile. Spencer felt the weight and warmth of her and it fired an erection right underneath her within a few second's work. He started breathing in small gasps, he felt his eyes protrude and bulge...
...and then he felt something inside him awaken. Not the burning flames of lustful desire that were cracking and popping and increasing, but something else...an element far more darker and more dangerous than that of sexual longing. It went beyond the acts of engaging intercourse with a woman; acts that were much wilder, much more extreme. The look of her beautiful, big lush green eyes, the way they worked in coordination with her small but cute, beautiful lips...he wanted to see it. He wanted to see what was behind them. He could feel it like a rabid fever spreading and burning and trying to rise from underneath his flesh...
Fiona stared at him; the friendly, affectionate smile faded away and her eyes now signaling that of concern and fear. “Spence?” she said. Spencer couldn't hear her. He couldn't see or hear or feel anything, except for her and her body, and what was inside her. He got up, pushing the weight off him. He could barely hear her as she yelped falling to the floor on her ass. All he could see was her, her fearful eyes, the spit and drool producing and swirling around his tongue, the rough, distraught smoke that now burned in his lungs next to his beating black heart. He wanted her and wanted her now! He was going to blossom her!
Spencer couldn't even hear her as she screamed and fled from the room.
The only thing he had remembered after that was seeing the closed door. He stared at the closed door for what had to have been an hour-long minute for him to recollect his current situation. What had happened? What was going on? Did he just take something? Did he hurt her? Was Willy and—
The door swung back open and in walks two six-foot-four, hulking tuxedo-sporting individuals, the looks on their faces meaning business. Behind them was Fiona, pointing a finger at him telling an older fellow—probably the head of the establishment—that “he was gonna hurt me; he was gonna rape me!” No questions, no story-swapping, no interrogating, no nothing—Spencer, Willy, and Willy's three friends were removed from the premises and were informed they were not welcome back. Needless to say, Willy and company were highly displeased. After some harsh verbal-abuse and badgering from the the three cohorts and Willy himself, Spencer went back to their dorm room and didn't say a word for the rest of the night. The next day was when Willy tried to talk to him. “What the hell happened in there? Were you seriously gonna do something?” Spencer could only stare down at the carpet, reminiscing the events last night in that bedroom, envisioning the sight of her lovely features those innocent orbs of forest-green pupils, and he felt that same fever creep up inside him again. “Spence
? Spence?” Willy snapped his fingers loudly in front of his eyes, breaking his trance. Spencer could only keep looking at nothing, avoiding eye contact with his friend...it was until there had been too long a pause between them until Spencer looked over to Willy. He was looking at him disbelievingly, shockingly, mouth open, eyes round like chicken's eggs. “Did you want to snuff her?” Spencer was almost literally blown away; his breath sucked from his lungs, his eyes widened, his jaw dropped. Willy slowly began to develop a tiny smile. “You can tell me, Spence. Did you want to kill her? Did you want to stab her? Don't hold back on me, man. That look that I just saw—I know that look. I remember it.” Spencer's world was flipping upside down; his faculties toying with his brain so badly he was starting to feel faint. “You...what?” he said. Willy said, “I remember having that look myself before I started doing something about it.” “What?” Spencer asked. He then thought he had a solution to this that he hadn't heard of. Did they have AA-type meetings for people like this? No. He was ready to take a hand-written note of some self-help books or the card of some recommended psychiatrist. Instead, Willy said, “What do you think?”
Spencer gasped, looking into his piercing gaze. He had never seen the such a wildfire blaze and roar through the windows of his brown eyes. Part terrifying—a terrifying feeling words couldn't begin to describe—and then also a great big cuddly soft blanket of heartwarming relaxation, confidence, that feeling of finding out that after all the shit a man has been through, that there is always that bright, white shining light of hope! Spencer was torn between the two. “You...?...You've...?” Spencer tried to say, feeling the sobs work their way up. Willy didn't answer, but kept his dauntingly deadpan stare on him, smiled, and gave a small nod. Spencer cried.
It was marked as one of the most important days in his life. This was like revealing to the brother Spencer never had that he had a problem in differentiation with normal everyday society—he finally found someone to be open with, and it brought a cascade of emotions swirling and rising in him like a geyser, now erupting with tears. He remembered Willy resting a hand on his shoulder and he kept weeping and weeping until he fell asleep.
The next day, alone in their dorm room, Willy spoke of his past experiences. From his very first girlfriend at the age of fourteen to a prostitute that he'd recently meat-cleaved a month ago. The tone and nonchalance in his narration suggested absolutely no signs of untruthfulness, exaggeration, or jerking-off of any kind. Spencer had never in his life been so devastatingly mind blown. Devastatingly. The man himself—Playboy Willy—a man larger than life, a man of money, looks, women, cars, attitude—a man who had everything; Spencer pictured the two of them as night and day. He found out that after all this time, after all the jokes, conversations, everything...they were both night and night. A “wee-hours of the night type of night”, if you will.
He could watch it all play in his head and remember it like it had just been the previous day, when in reality it was five or so months ago. Willy had since then promised him that he would find a nice secluded location that would suit their plans perfectly, arrange a double date with two other hot college chicks (from a different school, of course, they didn't need any heat from their own school) to do the traditional date thing, travel out to the country making them believe they're there to blow of some sexually-raging hormone steam...and then it would be then he'd free himself of the pain. For his whole life this tumor was growing and spreading in him, starving, hurting, poking, scratching...it had to stop and it was going to stop.
Less than a week ago now, Willy met a girl at a party, charmed her and had her on a hook being the seasoned pro he was, called her to see if she and a friend of hers would be interested in double-dating with he and a friend of his on Saturday night, October the thirteenth. She happily accepted. Tonight was the night.
“Damnit,” Willy said, slapping his forehead. “I should have brought a stereo for you. You should have a song to go with your first time. Everyone's got one. Mine's 'All Night Long' by Lionel Richie, it was playing at a party nearby. Every time I hear it, like if a car's driving by and it's blaring on the radio, it's like I'm reliving those very same emotions I felt during that time.”
“I didn't know you liked Lionel Richie.”
Willy snorted. “I don't. I didn't pick it. You can't pick your own song; it's gotta be random.”
Spencer inhaled for another deep breath.
“What about afterwards, with you know...the bodies?”
“Have I ever let you down before, Spense?” Willy said. “As I’ve just said, it’s nothing but meadows. The guy owned like five-hundred acres—there’s some forest in the back, we’ll stick ‘em down there, they won’t be found in a million years. Relax, I got us covered.”
Spencer continued to stare into space, saying nothing. Willy laughed, dropping his head.
“Dude, will you put your bitch card back in the deck already? We’re safe, man. I’ve got everything all figured out. The tarp, the shovels, it’s all back there, and I found a nice little spot out in the woods that’ll be perfect. You’re gonna be awesome, man. Remember, this is your first time; this is your first high. Make it special. Tonight, you are going to kill the cherry. This chick is your cherry, so pop that bitch! And pop her good, brother! And to commemorate this enchanting evening, in the morning, I’ll take you down to Schirk’s Original Waffle House, my treat.”
Spencer nodded, feeling the drool in his mouth circulate as he thought of those heavenly signature waffles that Schirk’s was famous for. However he couldn’t help but feel a sense of doubt buzzing in his head. Not over the strategy, but over the girl. She needed her trust and her affectionate respect for this to work. And they will have known each other not even twenty-four hours.
Nonetheless, he blocked it out, raised his chin, squared his shoulders and drew in one more deep breath. “Sounds like a plan.”
“Oh, yeah,” Willy said. “Use the word 'cute' to describe their clothes, accessories or whatever. Always gets a great response.”
Spencer nodded in understanding, and then turned his gaze to the road ahead.
“Alright, then,” he said. “It’s showtime.”