"Ski Masks and Knee Caps" by Ian O'Neill
‘Listen…you need to order some Trim Spa; buy some Stackers; just get something’, K.C. said, mentally tallying the Memorial Day crowd.
‘If you don’t work off those pounds I’ll lose customers; K.C. doesn’t like losing customers; customers don’t like pints from unattractive girls. D’you understand what I’m saying’ he said, watching Hanna’s six-G tits tease the men on barstools.
K.C. owned the Tun Tavern. He only hired girls. Every bartender at the ‘The Tun’ was female. The only males he hired were the Mexicans elbows deep in steam or chiseling patty fat from the grill.
The ‘Tun Girls’ were his girls. K.C’s girls.
It was humid for late July. There hadn’t been a breeze off the ocean for days. The flags were listless; the insects exuberant. Cobalt sparks spat from the mosquito lamp humming on the neighbor’s porch.
‘I’m next.’ She hugged her knees. ‘I won’t get with him so he's gonna fire me. Like, you don’t even realize, when K.C.’s not getting laid heads roll. A manager got fired because he kept trying to fuck her and she kept shooting him down.’
‘He followed me to my car tonight after we closed.’ She swatted a gnat. ‘He says the sleaziest shit- like that we should get a room at Caesars and that his wife won’t find out. How disgusting is that! He’s married! His kids are teenagers! And if you shoot him down he throws a tantrum. Then he gets pissed and you get fired.’
‘K.C.’s come on to every girl in ‘The Tun’; it’s why he only hires pretty girls.’
‘He’s already in the middle of a trial’ she snapped, ‘It’s the third time! He got off both other times. He’s best friends with the judge. It doesn’t matter if he’s guilty or if it’s true, he knows he’ll never be charged! So if I got fired why the hell would I want to take him to court?’
‘It’s pointless.’ Hadean blue sparks glinted in her eyes; a moth flew too close to the flames. ‘It wouldn’t make a difference.’
This wasn’t the first time she had cried.
‘He’s untouchable.’
There were four of us.
We took B.A.’s Explorer. It was arsenic grey. The windows were stygian.
The cherry of my cigarette seethed in the passenger window.
In the back Faceman spiraled athletic tape up the shaft of the Louisville.
Murdock wove strips through the finger holes of the Knuckles.
A chain rattled in the trunk when we hit a pothole. It clanged with the hollowness of a tolling-bell when the crowbar rolled into it.
Passing outlet stores we parked in the lot adjacent to the tavern. The city never replaced the bulbs of the streetlamps.
I flicked my cigarette over the passenger side mirror when he came out.
We pulled down our ski masks.
Unhurriedly quiet, we circled the car, exiting the shadows two feet from him.
His mouth opened but shock had seized his breath
Can’t breathe…
Can’t scream.
The Louisville was a momentary blur; it struck with the sound of an ax meeting a tree.
I never felt a shiver up the spine of the bat as K.C’s knee cap exploded into fragmentized vacuity.
He hadn’t crumbled to the ground before Murdock was hauling off on him. Steeled fist met face in geysers of blood. With every haymaker K.C.’s head rebounded off the asphalt.
B.A.’s crowbar buried two ribs in a grave of internal obscurity.
With a flick of the wrist Faceman dealt K.C. an innocuous ball-tap. It hinted at the answers to the questions undoubtedly to run through his head. It was a reminder: there’s always worse.
Circled around K.C., I crouched close.
‘No one’s untouchable’.
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