Viper (Short Story) Read online

  Another one catches him in the jaw.

  He falls.

  The Zemeki's make a circle around Viper and do their best to grind him into hamburger. Then they turn away and slouch back to their trucks, back out to the swamplands and trees.

  Viper moans, Viper gurgles, then Viper rises like a dying beast. He gets to his feet, doesn't even lean on a table, bleeding, his nose broken, a splintered bone sticking out of his elbow. He walks away on his own steam.

  Guess Viper didn't even go to the hospital, just used some old whisky to clean the wounds.

  There's a dent in his steel skull where one of the bats hit him. Hair doesn't even grow there.

  So anyway, my life spins slowly on like a worn record, same songs, same story. Stories you've probably heard before. Tricia gets pregnant and I'm stuck playing father, which isn't as bad as I imagined it. I don't see Viper for years.

  Actually I never see him again.

  But I hear what he's doing. Buddy of mine went to the pen for car theft and picked up a few stories. Guess Viper's a legend there, made some kind of king of himself in prison.

  He must like it in the cage though, cause he killed some guy while he was there. Well not just some guy, his parole officer actually, in to talk about life outside. Viper knifed him in the throat with a blade someone had smuggled inside. Maybe in a cake. Nets himself life.

  I wonder sometimes why he did it. I mean Viper wasn't stupid, he knew what killing the guy would mean. Maybe someone dared him. Or maybe he was just bored.

  I don't think about Viper much anymore. But sometimes when I come home after two twelve hour shifts, the sound of the machines still buzzing in my ears, chains and pipes clanking, I see Viper sitting in his cell, his face trying to smile but failing cause the nerves are dead and he's telling the same joke over and over again.

  Q: What were the best three years of Viper's life?

  A: Grade Three.