He explained how Tony was in a wheelchair since the age of 10, when he got shot in the head by a stray bullet.
Spider-Man looked at Janet. “He knew what it was like to walk, see? He remembers. You don’t. You couldn’t even dream about it because you never knew. See?”
Janet ignored him, playing blackjack on her phone again, the music loud.
I smelled s’mores.
She looked up and said, “Oh, shuh, shit. Fock dat.” She looked at me. “No, doe worry. Iss, muh, my problem. Shit.”
She backed into the wall a few times, made a few wrong turns, then used the automatic door and went inside the library.
Spider-Man sat in the woodchips and plugged in his phone, started playing a game.
The music was funny.
Quest music.
Made my heart beat harder.
Made me want to quest so bad.
Fuck yeah.
Any quest.
Me and whoever.
Me by myself.
I don’t care if I die.
If I go on a quest and it kills me, oh well, that’s how I want it.
I sat down in the woodchips next to Spider-Man.
“Love this game,” he said, sniffing a few times. “Called Blood Brothers. You gotta run through valleys and shit, fuckin fight monsters and snakes. Scrazy man. Fuckin bananas. I got this fuckin sword, you gotta be kiddin me! Fuckin crystal sword, dahhhh.”
He showed me the screen.
Couldn’t tell what I was looking at.
He started playing again and I listened as he detailed the plot of the game, including main bosses.
Many of the bosses sounded impossible to beat.
And yet, here he was, beating them.
I saw a day-old daily paper under the bushes.
I looked through it without reading anything — eventually just laying the paper open on my lap and staring at some birds on a powerline.
Fuck yeah.
Spider-Man tapped the paper, saying, “That’s some fucked-up shit, man. They finally sentenced his ass.”
It was a story from a few years ago when this guy in the neighborhood ran up behind two women and hit them both in the head with a baseball bat, damaging the one girl to where she’d never talk again.
The attacker was sentenced to 120 years.
“Oh yeah, I remember this,” I said.
“Fuck that punk,” Spider-Man said, pointing down with his bent-up finger. There was snot coming out of his nose. “Fuck that motherfucker. That’s some bitch shit, du. Fuckin pussy! Man they better relocate his ass to a different state, du. If he serves around here, they’a kill his ass right away. Fucking pussy bitch. I wish he try that shit on me. Bring that bat here, motherfucker. You get one swing.” He held up one finger. “Then I fucking kill you.”
I imagined myself as a public executioner for the city of Chicago.
One who used a baseball bat to execute prisoners.
I’d live in a tower somewhere out in Lake Michigan, within a few miles of the city.
And on the night of the execution they’d send a boat for me and I’d have to go ashore and kill someone with a baseball bat.
Spider-Man discussed the treatment of certain kinds of criminals in prison — like rapists or pedophiles or punks.
The treatment was beatings, stabbings, burnings, rapes, and murder.
“Specially if you hurt them kids, bro,” he said, shaking his head with his eyes closed. “You hurt some kids they cold eat your ass, man.” He started laughing and made a saluting gesture with his hand. “They’a eat your fuckin ass. They say, ‘Ok, you want to hit some girls with a baseball bat? Ok. Alright.’”
He mimed raping someone with a broomstick or bat-like object, doing a motion with one hand like he was breaking a game of pool over and over again.
“Yeah motherfucker, run that shit,” he said, snarling and clamping his teeth. “Run, that, shit.”
He kept doing the motion.
I was laughing.
What a nice day.
A day to ask for forgiveness in advance, for whatever.
A day to quest for forgiveness.
I read a random line in the article about how the attacker made a ‘puppy-dog’ face to his family in court when the judge read the sentence.
“Tellin you, bro,” Spider-Man said, tapping the article again. “They better relocate his ass or he dead. Just like they did with Dahmer. Oohwee. Cold smashed his ass. Fuckin bananas.”
He did a little inhalation through his front teeth like ‘ssssssss.’
Then he explained how Dahmer died, resting his phone in his lap, dulling the quest music.
“A guard took his ass to ‘clean a bathroom,’” Spider-Man said, doing the quotes. “Then the guard left, and four dudes came in and smashed him. Cold smashed his ass. They don’t give a fuck. They all lifers anyway. What’s 45 more years? Who give a fuck? Fuckin fists, kicks, broomsticks, stompin his ass. Bashed his head against the toilet. Dahhh.”
He mimed slamming his own head into a toilet, hand on the back of his neck.
“Goosh goosh goosh, ahhhhh,” he yelled, making a cartoonish face.
He was sucking in the spit that came out over his lips, in between laughing and saying, “Goosh goosh.”
“Ayo yeah, man,” he said. “You kiddin me? Blood everywhere. On the toilets, the sinks, the mirrors. Blood on the fuckin ceiling, man. What!? Are you high?”
I was smiling.
Felt a painful excitement in my chest and stomach.
Like everything was perfect for me at that moment.
Blood all over the ceiling of my life.
Blood everywhere.
A quest for blood everywhere.
If not blood everywhere, then nowhere.
Keith walked by.
He came over and asked for a dime.
I gave him one.
“Yeah I jus woke up,” he said. “Man.” He stared at us for a second. “Went to sleep at like ten this morning, but no because I mean, this morning I got too fucked up, so. Hey but no, you going to Tony’s funeral tonight?”
“Nah man, hell nah,” Spider-Man said. “Not goin to that shit.”
Keith said, “No because, anyway, I have to go to sleep I guess. I’ll see ya.”
He walked away.
The door to the library opened and Janet came out.
Spider-Man said he refused to go to his friend Tony’s funeral because he wanted to remember him how he was, “…smiling, laughing, hugging, playing.”
Same with his mom, his brother, his sister.
“No,” he said, loud. “No way. I’m not going to that shit. Funerals are stupid. Man, just fuckin burn me. Don’t fuckin waste time on making me look fake, fuckin, makin my family sad, buyin an expensive box. Fuck allat. You don’t even have to make it special with the ashes. Thow em in the lake, the fuckin park, I don’t care.”
“Yeah, just pour me down the sewer,” I said, watching traffic for a second.
“Yeah, the sewer,” he said, shrugging, like ‘sure, why not.’
I said what if one or more of your relatives used your ashes to do a homemade tattoo.
And then when s/he died, same thing.
So in a thousand years, your great-great-great-whatever would have part of his great-great-great-whatever inside his/her body as a decoration.
Janet said she wanted to be cremated and worn in a necklace around Spider-Man’s neck.
It took her a long time to explain herself, which annoyed Spider-Man.
He kept referencing her ‘batteries.’
“Damn, ey, where the batteries at?” he said, checking around her wheelchair.
Or he’d try to unplug a plug of hers.
“Should I unplug this? Boop.”
Janet laughed a little.
“How about this?” he said. “Boop.”
“Stop, beb. Stop.”
A woman and child exited the library.
They walked up to the street, holding hands.