Chapter 3

Rhino

Rolling out of bed seemed harder to do on a Saturday morning after a football game, and he loved it. A winning game meant it would be even harder to move from the swelling and aches of the night before. The less points the opposing team was allowed to score, meant there was more opportunities to throw his body full force at other players. He could care less what the final score was, as long as he was able to inflict as much pain as possible on the opposing team. Sometimes, in the passion of the moment he even tried to hurt his own teammates if the opportunity arose, the bottom of a pile or a missed tackle left no one on the field safe.

     He could not see the appeal of non-contact sports like tennis or bowling, and to be honest he wasn’t even competitive. He loved watching the other players wince in pain and hearing their screams and cries of agony. The sight of blood and broken bones gave him more of a rush than kissing a girl or even the taste of victory. Victory without pain was worthless. After winning the state title last season, when everyone else was cheering and hugging like idiots, Rhino walked alone, in silence, to the locker room releasing his aggression and fury on the defenseless Wichita State lockers. He had only accumulated a handful of tackles, and even though they put an end to pivotal moments that could have swayed the outcome of the game in favor of the other team, the opposing players still always got up, and he loathed that.

     He had knocked himself unconscious during last night’s game and finally came to after breathing in the piercing aroma of the athletic trainer’s smelling salts. The pain he himself felt was intoxicating and combined with the sight of the rival running back on a stretcher with a strand of blood running from his mouth caused him to become aroused. In order to resist revealing his lust toward the pain he had to hit himself in the groin and then headbutt his own helmet.

     He grabbed the pain killers from the medicine cabinet before closing it to look in to the mirror on the front side and reveal the bruise where the helmet had connected solidly. It stood as a memento of his self-inflicted pain. He hoped the other player was dead, possibly he would never play another game again, or at the very least was held up somewhere in a hospital bed wearing a gown and eating lime jello through a straw. That would give him all the satisfaction in the world. To know that he was the person that held someone’s life and safety in his hands. To know that their life is ruined because he wished it. To be truly powerful.

     Just looking at himself in the mirror and picturing the unconscious players face helplessly lying on the stretcher being hauled off by the paramedics brought back his arousal, and unlike the night before he had no judging eyes to hide from gazing down at him.

     A thundering fist hit the hallow door of the small bathroom seeming to shake the whole trailer on its foundation. “You better hurry up in that damn bathroom, you little gay boy. What are you doing, putting on your makeup?” Thomas Murphy yelled.

     “I… I’ll be out in a minute dad.” Ryan said timidly.

     “You better not be choking the chicken in my damn bathroom you little prick. If you make me wait one more fuckin minute I swear I’ll end you boy.”

     One of these days I’ll fucking kill you, you old bastard, Rhino thought, but he wouldn’t dare say it. “Yes sir.” Was all that came out as he opened the door staring at his shoes as he opened the door in anticipation of his father retaliating for the inconvenience of having to wait for the restroom.

     “Look at me when I talk to you, you pussy!” Thomas shouted as he hit Rhino with a flurry of open palmed slaps. “Look at you, not even tough enough to fight back. Hard to believe you’re my son, your mom would have done you a favor aborting you if she didn’t puss out, guess you take after her.” Thomas grabbed his head and began to push Ryan out of the way to enter the bathroom.

     Rhino slapped his hand away in anger and looked up at his father. “F…Fu…Fuck you, you drunk.” He managed to say.

     “Good for you, maybe you will grow some balls someday.” He said cracking a smile. His face turned back to anger as he grabbed Ryan by the shirt and pressed him against the wall putting a large hairy knuckled finger in his son’s face. “Best not be in this trailer when I get out of the shitter boy. I’ll give you that one, but if you’re still here, I’ll make you eat those words.”

     Rhino slammed the door to the double wide trailer. “The fuck are you looking at!” he yelled at Buster, his father’s pit bull, that was sitting in its dog pen and looked up as he opened the door. He kicked the chained fence while passing and continued on his way to the orange ’87 IROC-Z parked on the gravel in the front of the lot.

#

The wind rushed through his hair as he sped towards the sand pits where he was meeting the Jacobs twins to ride dirt bikes and shoot guns. The tires hugged the pavement and the engine roared as he throttled down the gas and began to test the limits of the 5.7-liter V8 under the hood. His knuckles turned white as he tightened down on the wheel. His eyes were focused on the sharp turn half a mile up ahead in the road. He loved to hit the brakes and drift through the turn with reckless regard, not knowing if an oncoming car lie on the other side of the turn. The road on the other side remained a mystery and all he could see was the mouth of the turn.

     Suddenly the car shifted and dipped as an outside force slowed its forward progress. The windshield became an intricate spider web of opaque glass, darkness, and tan, as the unknown victim of Rhino’s vehicular assault rolled over the front of the car sprinkling blood and fur into the cab through the t-top overhead. It summersaulted through the air before Rhino finally saw it fall and hit the pavement through his rear-view mirror as he slammed on the break with both feet and skidded to a stop.

     He exited the car and walked up to the wounded beast. One of its antlers was significantly broken as well as multiple other bones throughout its body and its skin was torn revealing the animal’s viscera. As he stood there admiring the carnage of which he was the catalyst, a hoof caught him just above the knee from the animals agonized thrashing, sending pain rushing throughout his body and bringing him to a kneel. Striking up a flashback of the beating he had taken at the hands of his alcoholic father. He heard his father’s words played on repeat within his mind as he grabbed the remaining antler of the gravely injured buck and began hitting the wild animal with reckless regard. Punching it in the face as it began to grunt and moan in further agony. He kicked at its innards that lie open on the back-country road. When his fist began to hurt, and his knuckles bled from repetitively beating against the dying animal, he wrapped his hands around it’s throat and squeezed long past the moment he felt the final pulse of life leave the body of the beast.

     “FUCK YOU!” he yelled at the slain beast that worked as a surrogate vessel to unleash his pent-up rage toward Thomas Murphy.

     He stared at the carcass with hate and began to fill fulfilled. The hunger in his heart for pain and vengeance was beginning to subside. He craved more as he marveled at the ease of that which he had done. When suddenly his gaze was broken.

     “Oh my, isn’t that a shame.” A voice said from directly behind him.

     He looked down at his blood-soaked hands wondering what the stranger might have seen, how it might have appeared to someone other than himself. “I had to. It was dying anyway, I just ended its misery.” He said trying to mask his bliss with pity.

     “Oh yes, I am sure you did kiddo. Whelp, let me help you haul it off the road okeydokey.” The voice said as Ryan turned to see who it belonged to.

     The man standing in front of him was the definition of average in height and weight for a middle-aged man and wore a thick mustache with large wire framed glasses that seemed to be as thick as magnifying glasses. His khakis were pleated down the front and his button-down shirt and red tie were covered by a hunter green sweater vest. He looked like a guy that would mow his lawn twice a week after measuring the blades of grass with a ruler then put on a pair of cleats to walk lines on the lawn to aerate it. The station wagon that sat in park on the side of the road behind him looked like the Griswold family Truckster, only further confirmed his mediocrity. He must have been some loser from suburbia that just happened to be traveling through Westminster Falls.

     “Why?

     “Well, you don’t want someone to come around that corner and hurt themselves do ya silly?” the man said as Ryan imagined it happening and somewhat wished it.

     He wondered if anyone would miss the man if he killed him right then and there, but decided against it when he heard a car coming up the road behind them. “Oh, yeah. Sure.”

     The man waved at the passing car and reached his hand out toward Rhino. “Rodger, Rodger Hawthorne. Just got in this morning from Wichita. Used to live here, but I’ve been away for a long time, wouldn’tcha know.”

     “Cool man.” Rhino said shaking Mr. Hawthorne’s hand with one soaked in dear blood.

     “This is the part you tell me your name, son.”

     “Oh, Ryan, Ryan Murphy.”

     Mr. Hawthorne produced a handkerchief from his back pocket and began to wipe down his hands. “Well Ryan Murphy, I think we’ll be seeing each other around more often. I’m your new substitute principal. My good friend, Mayor Brewer, called me last night and said Principal Green resigned to start searching for his missing daughter, Shelly, bless her heart.”

     Rhino stood stunned knowing that Shelly Green was missing. He had never known anyone that had come up missing. Good riddance he thought, she was a bitch. He nodded his head in pretend approval as he turned and rolled his eyes to walk back to his damaged vehicle to break out the broken windshield and continue driving to the sandpits.

     “See ya later, alligator.” Mr. Hawthorne said waiving as Ryan walked away.

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Next Chapter: Chapter Four: Hair of the Dog