Screamscapes: Tales of Terror (22 page)

I didn’t like it.

“Look Stephen, I don’t like you. I never have. You’ve always been a stupid, selfish, mean-spirited, petulant little prick,” he said. “You tell me that
I
should be kind to you because
you’re
my only friend? Maybe you should take a look in the mirror, Stephen, because the last time I checked it seemed like I was
your
only friend. I’ve got lots of friends.”

I couldn’t believe my ears: the Nard biting the hand that fed him? I would never have expected this. Talk about deluded. This guy took the cake.

“Bullshit, Joe. You were so stupid they had to send you away to the defective baby school in eleventh grade. They didn’t even let you stay in the special classes you were so malfunctive. They didn’t have jars of paste big enough to feed people your size,” I told him. That should put him back in his place, where he belonged.

He didn’t even blink.

“See Stephen? That’s what I’m talking about. You’re so dense you never have a clue about anything that’s going on around you,” he said. “You’re not stupid, you’re just willfully
ignorant
. If you had paid even the slightest bit of attention to what people were saying about me going to college in the eleventh grade, even read a newspaper even once, you would have known that I wasn’t going to MIT at the age of sixteen as a student. I went there to teach.”

I just sat there looking at him, blinking. I could feel the beer kicking in. It was giving me a pretty righteous buzz. I finished off the dregs as I tried to come up with an appropriate response.

Then it came to me. The perfect response.

BUUURRRRRPPP!

I let it slide out of my throat slowly, like a big ol’ bullfrog singing a mating call. I could feel the grease of the corndog all slippery in the back of my throat as I blew my belch in the Nard’s direction.

“Nice, Stephen. Real nice,” he mumbled. “Here I am – a person who has created self-sustainable nano-propulsion systems, engineered indestructible bonds within subatomic chains, patented self-replicating organic materials production techniques, devised a method for conducting electricity across hundreds of thousands of miles without the need for rare or precious metals. Hell, Stephen, I’ve single-handedly created a way to turn a single small rock into an unbreakable atomic chain that could reach from here to the moon, did you know that? And yet here I sit, breathing in the corn dog breath of the world’s most obtuse, narcissistic, completely non-self-aware numbskull, on an otherwise glorious afternoon. I’m talking about you, do you comprehend anything that I’m saying, or is it all just eight-bit bleeps inside that thick head of yours?”

I took another bite of my corn dog, listening. Fascinated, even. This was the most I had ever heard an ass-booger speak at one time, and the extent of his delusion was amazing to me. The words he was saying almost sounded like he was making sense, but then you try to put them all together and it was easy to realize he was just gabbling nonsense, like a parrot that’s been stuck in a room with the Discovery Channel on TV for too long.

I glanced at the game watch he had given me. The park would be closing in an hour.

The Nard pushed his beer aside and leaned in towards me, narrowing his beady eyes, examining me. My second beer was empty, so I grabbed his and took a long pull. The world around us was starting to spin a little. I kinda felt like we were riding the Scrambler already.

“But you know what, Stephen?” he whispered. “Sitting here, thinking about it now - I wouldn’t change a thing. All these years I’ve resented that my mom kept making me bring you here, year after year, being nice to you when all you’d do is torture and belittle me.”

“It feels strange to say,” the Nard continued blathering, “but looking back at it now the truth is if it wasn’t for you being such an asshole to me when we were little, then I would never have accomplished so much. I honestly have to say that my entire course in life - all my scientific discoveries, almost everything I’ve ever done - was initially inspired by you.”

He paused and cast a wistful look at the Scrambler spinning behind us.

“Yep, you inspired me all right,” he said, pointing a finger at the ride, “and so did that.”

It was clear to me that the Nard had now gone completely crazy. I took another long chug from his beer and it foamed up, dripping all over the front of my shirt.

“You know what, Joe-peeing?” I said, trying not to slur my words. The beer seemed stronger than usual. “I don’t like you. I’ve never liked you. I’ve only ever taken you here every year to be nice and let you have a day out with normal people, to try to make you feel like a normal person. But you just showed me that you think you’re so much better than everybody, but you’re sick, Joe-peeing, you’re real sick, and you need help. I don’t want to ever see you again. Don’t bother coming to my house next year, begging for me to take you to King’s Gardens again. We’re done, you got it?”

I guzzled down the rest of the beer, waiting for his crying and whining to start. The Nard lived for this day, for the single chance each year to get to ride his beloved Scrambler. There was no way he was going to let me go home without promising to bring him back next year. I’d undoubtedly be dragging him along on the ground behind me as I tried to walk away, him clutching my ankle with both hands, blubbering and snotting everywhere, begging for me to forgive his insolence.

But I meant it. I was done with this imbecile.

I was surprised when, instead of freaking out like I expected, the Nard just smiled.

“You’re right, Stephen. This
is
going to be our last time coming here together. And I want to say, I’m sorry.”

Ahh, there it was. I knew he would be begging for forgiveness.

“I’m sorry for acting so pompous today,” he continued. “I’m just a stupid retard and I make up stupid shit, and I’m really just jealous because you’re so good at Super Mario Brothers and you have an awesome room and an awesome life and I’m just an ass-booger and I got sent away to a school for retards and they make me wear a helmet so I won’t hurt myself,” he said.

Jealous! I knew it! He was so envious of how cool and talented I was that I hadn’t realized how hard he had been working to make up stuff about himself, just to impress me. I almost felt a little sorry for the loser. Not much, but a little. I still was done with him, don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t going to bring him back here, ever - but I didn’t want the last fun day of his entire life to end badly. That would just be mean.

I knew exactly what would cheer him up.

“What do you say we go ride the Scrambler right now?” I said. “One last time for old times’ sakes?”

“You mean it? Really? That would be swell, Stephen,” he said. His eyes lit up like a little monkey who found a cat turd while digging in the litter box.

We went and got in line for the ride together. It was a short line; like I said, the ride was lame.

When it was our turn to get on, some bunch of assholes got into Joe’s favorite seat, seat number twelve. I told them that they had to get off and let us have it, that I was Tom Cruise and my friend was Dustin Hoffman and if they didn’t, he would piss himself and scream Judge Wapner until they did.

They didn’t argue.

I offered Joe the outside squish seat, his favorite, and he took it. I kept waiting for him to whip out some gadgets, to get out his pen and notebook, to strap on a windmill hat or shoot a laser pointer at something; but he didn’t, even when the ride started.

We sat there together in silence and the ride started moving, turning, spinning - slowly at first, but then faster and faster, two grown men who had once been little boys sitting in these same seats every year for the last decade and a half. Even though so much time had passed, I was still smart and the Nard was still, well, the Nard. Not much had changed, I guessed; not much but the size of our shoes.

The ride started really picking up speed. It felt like we were chocolate chips, being whipped into cookie batter by a monster-sized blender. I could feel the corn dogs paddling for their lives in the swimming pool of beer that was sloshing inside my stomach, churning, foaming, building up pressure like a hot two-liter of soda, shaken up and ready to explode.

I fought back the urge to spew all over Joe as the ride flew, spinning past the other cars, smiling faces of other riders rushing at me and then shooting away just as we were about to collide, over and over, the metal sound of the gears grinding in a steam engine din, behind the sounds of laughter and the diesel engine that powered the whole thing.

The pressure of the ride squeezed me up against Joe so hard I couldn’t pull myself away from him. We weren’t so little anymore, and I had packed on a few extra pounds during the winter. I wondered if I was crushing him to death.

If I was, you wouldn’t have known from the look on his face. I had never seen him look so happy before, so joyous, rapturous even. Usually he was so uptight, always busy working on something, even while riding rides he was always calculating, experimenting, taking notes. But not today. Today he was simply riding the ride, eyes closed, his hair buffeting back and forth in the breeze, a wide smile of pure bliss spreading across his face in the warm sunshine, like melted butter on pancakes. He looked happier in that instant than I could ever remember being in my whole entire life.

Ignorance is bliss, they say. I figured if that was true, then it stood to reason that Joe should be just about the happiest man in the whole universe.

After the ride slowed down and finally came to a stop, Joe and I got off and walked through the exit gate, where we stood and looked at each other with our hands in our pockets for a minute, not sure what to say, not sure how to end it, whatever
it
was – friendship wasn’t the right word. Maybe fifteen-year-long play date was more like it.

“Well, Joe,” I said after a bit, “It’s been fun. Be good.”

I offered him my hand.

“Thanks, Stephen,” he said, taking my hand. “Thanks for being my friend.”

“I’m not your friend, Nard. I never was,” I said. I just wanted him to be clear on this point, so he wouldn’t be bugging me for the rest of his life whenever he got lonely.

He held onto my hand for a moment, silent, looking at the watch on my arm that he had given me. His palm was sweaty and he looked nervous, though fuck knows why. For a second I thought he was going to ask me to give it back. Fat chance of that happening; there would be no Indian-givers on my watch, pun intended.

“Ok Stephen,” he said, finally dropping my hand. I wiped it on my jeans to get rid of the sweat-slime he had left there. “But there’s one last surprise I have for you, before we say good-bye,” he said.

“I’m not doing any more stupid experiments for you on the Scrambler, Joe. You’re a grown man, go do them yourself.”

“This has nothing to do with that, Stephen, I swear,” he said, suddenly seeming very earnest. “This has to do with you achieving your life’s full potential. Are you interested?”

What does this moron know about my potential? Honestly?

Achieving my life’s full potential could only mean one thing: the highest score on Super Mario Brothers
in the world
. The top of the Nintendo leader board, baby.

“What could you possibly know about
that
,” I asked with as much sneer as I could pack into my voice. “Have you ever even picked up a controller in your life?”

“Let’s just say, for arguments sake, that I could upload a program to the watch I gave you. If that program could show you the fastest possible solution to Super Mario Brothers, based on years of research and reverse engineering, would you be interested in seeing it?”

“Does a bear stick his dick into the honey twat?”

“That’s what I thought,” Joe said. “Let’s just say that this is my good-bye gift to you Stephen, my final way of saying ‘thank-you’ for so many years of fake friendship.”

I started punching buttons on the watch, but nothing happened.

“How do I make it show me the fastest route?” I asked.

He shook his head left to right slowly and smiled.

“It’s not on the watch yet, Stephen. It has to be uploaded,” he said. “Remember that spot where I used to stand with the laser measuring tape? Walk over there and look for a small white ‘X’ painted on the ground. Last year, I embedded a small transmitter into the asphalt there. Go stand on the ‘X’ and hold your arm with the watch straight out in front of you towards the ride and then count to sixty. The transmitter has a sensor that will detect the watch and automatically begin uploading the file to the watch. Don’t move until the watch begins to beep, or else the file will be corrupted. It’s programmed to only send the code once, so make sure you don’t screw it up.”

Typical Nard: always finding a way to make something simple into something excruciatingly complicated. But if he had found a shortcut that I could use to get to the top of the leader board faster, I was happy to take it. The sooner I was world champ for Super Mario Brothers, the sooner I could get started on the original Tomb Raider.

He pointed in the general direction of where he used to stand with his laser pointer and I headed towards it, scanning the ground for an ‘X’. Sure enough, there it was, just on the other side the rails where people lined up next to the entrance.

I stepped directly on top of the X. I looked back at the Nard to make sure I was in the right place, but he was already talking excitedly to a couple of park employees, no doubt about what kind of paint they used to paint the stripes on the Scrambler this year or some other dumb shit.

The ride was beginning to load, and people were pushing their way through the gate towards the pathetic ride like people on welfare jostling for free cheese. I decided to wait until the ride was fully loaded so no one would accidentally bump me and mess up my upload.

I touched the watch on my right wrist. The metal felt so heavy and solid, cool and smooth to the touch. I looked over to the Nard’s favorite car, the ever-amazing seat number twelve. A lanky redneck man with scraggly muttonchops and a camouflage t-shirt had made the poor decision to plop himself down in the squish seat between his four-hundred pound wife and hard steel.

Good luck surviving the ride with Roseanne Barr crushing you to death
, I thought.

The ride began to move, and I held my arm straight out in front of me towards it as the Nard had instructed. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe he was tricking me into helping him with one last experiment. It better not be, or else I would cram this watch down his throat, I decided. If this would help me achieve my goal of becoming the Mario World Champion, it was worth a shot, I figured.