Paul’s father was a carpenter with a penchant for crude jokes. Tyler liked him immensely. It was easy to see why he would call the crowbar a “persuader.” If Tyler saw someone coming at him with that thing he’d do whatever the guy wanted.
Tyler expected a light to come on in Sasha’s house. At any moment one of the windows would fill with light and a shadowed form would fill the frame. He waited and no lights came on.
“What’re we waiting for?” Paul asked.
“Nothing. What exactly are we going to do?”
“Make some noise and leave a calling card.”
Tyler waited for an explanation.
Paul pulled a can of spray paint from the space between the door and his seat. He shook it. “You’re better with words than me, what do you want to write?”
“Kill the baby?” Tyler said in half-bewilderment. What were they doing here in the middle of the night?
Paul smiled. “That’s not bad, but let me spice it up a bit. I was thinking something like We’re not fucking around, bitch—kill the baby or we’ll be back. Real Call of Duty type shit.”
“You’re going to write all that out? Where?”
Paul thought for a moment. “You are fagging out.”
“No, I’m—”
“Who gives a shit where we write it? Do you want to end this shit or what? The bitch is a psycho and her mother’s a card-carrying witch, you said so yourself.”
“Sasha said it was all a misunderstanding, some elaborate thing her mother does. She’s not right in the head.”
“No shit.” Paul smacked the crowbar (persuader) against an open palm with a dull thwap. “Do you want to be a father or not?”
“No.”
“Then let’s party.”
Before Tyler could offer any more delays, Paul was outside and running up the front lawn. He started screaming almost immediately. It sounded more like the shouts of an angry child than a barbaric war cry.
Tyler got out of the car as well, bat in both hands, unsure what to do with it. Paul smacked the crowbar against the wood railing on the front steps. The structure vibrated. Paul hit it again and wood crackled with a deafening splinter. Another hit sent the railing tumbling over into one of the well-groomed bushes on either side of the stairs.
Tyler ran to him, grabbed his arm. “You said no violence.”
“No.” He smiled. “You said no violence.” He crashed the heavy steel bar onto the fallen railing and a piece fractured almost in half. “Shit’s rotten anyway.”
“Enough.”
Paul laughed. He shook the spray-paint bottle like he was getting ready to throw it as a bomb. “We haven’t left our mark yet.” He started spraying a message on the steps. It was impossible to see what he was writing in the dark, but Paul apparently thought it was amusing enough to keep giggling like someone whose brain has just split.
A faint flickering red light floated out from the downstairs window. Had that light been on the whole time? It was the candles on the witchcraft altar.
Tyler grabbed Paul’s arm again, hard. “I don’t think she’s sleeping.”
“What?” He glanced at the house. “The psycho’s watching us?”
“No,” Tyler said, “her mother.”
* * *
Tyler and Paul froze. Somewhere a dog barked and car screeched to a halt. These sounds echoed to them from the other side of the lake, but no sounds emanated from the house. Maybe Sasha’s mother had left a few candles burning as some sort of witchcraft custom. She might be far off in dreamland right now while he and Paul were imitating mannequins in her front yard.
“What should we do?” Paul grunted in throaty gurgles.
“You brought us out here.”
“You wanted to come here.”
“You broke the railing.”
Paul hesitated, shrugged. “We might as well finish.” He shook the spray paint bottle and resumed his threatening, almost illegible, note. After a few letters, he stopped. “You going to do anything productive?”
Tyler glanced at the house, then off to the street and then back to Paul. He still held the bat in both hands.
“Bust the bitch’s car.” Paul pointed toward the driveway.
There was no garage, so any cars would have to be parked in the driveway, which was barely large enough for two vehicles. The only car parked there was Sasha’s Oldsmobile that was rusting in so many spots it looked like it had leprosy. Tyler turned back to Paul to ask if he really expected Tyler to do something to Sasha’s car but Paul had returned to his spray-painted note and was laughing at his own wittiness.
Tyler walked toward the car. He could just dent the door a little bit. That would get the message across (in case she didn’t notice her destroyed railing or the paint on her front steps) and not be too damaging.
But you need to be damaging, a voice told him. This girl thinks you raped her and now she’s pregnant. She’s trying to frame you. She wants to force you to love her. She’s lost her mind and she doesn’t care how much pain she causes you. She doesn’t care that Delaney is dead. Even if her mother didn’t cast some spell, Sasha is still out of her mind. She’s been going around school telling everyone you two are practically married. If you don’t get her to back off now, you will never be rid of her. SEND THE BITCH A MESSAGE!
Tyler’s hands had slipped down to the bottom of the bat and he held it out at his side like he was expecting a baseball to come flying out of the dark. He approached the car with sure-footed steps and nodded with every indictment from his mind. Sasha was crazy. She did need to be stopped. She was fucking up his life. She was a dangerous cunt-trap who needed to be stopped.
He brought the bat back and swung it forward so quickly he barely realized he was doing it. The meat of the bat bounced off the front fender, leaving only a minor dent. That’s nothing, the voice said. She won’t even notice that. Send a REAL message!
He brought the bat back again and swung forward with all his force. Halfway through the swing a different voice asked him what the hell he was doing and he screamed not out of rage but out of fear. He had lost control so easily.
Like when you raped her.
The bat crashed into and then through the windshield. The glass crumpled and shattered simultaneously. Tiny pieces of glass exploded in all directions. The bat bounced off the dashboard and Tyler stumbled backward. He dropped the bat and watched it roll under the car. What was he doing? What the fuck had he done? Nausea flooded his stomach and all his muscles cramped together as if on cue. He hunched over, grabbed his knees, sucked at the cold night air.
Paul stopped spray painting. “Nice hit, man. Didn’t think you had it in you.”
“We have to leave,” Tyler said through gasps.
“No shit.”
The light above the front door blared on and then the door swung wide. Instead of a long-haired witch dressed in black, Sasha stepped onto the porch dressed in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. The shirt made her breasts look almost as big as he remembered.
What Paul had sprayed on the steps resembled the crayon doodles of a child. If there was a message in his painting (was that an “f” and maybe a “u”?) it had been completely lost somewhere between Paul’s brain and his hand.
“Tyler?” Sasha sounded small, like a child.
Neither Tyler nor Paul said anything. They resumed their mannequin postures.
“What’s going on?”
“We …” Tyler started and could say no more.