Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

starting. Augie and I stopped and looked back and listened. The car took off, the sound of the motor fading. It was heading away from us, the motor winding up, then pausing as gears changed. Someone was pushing a sports car to its limits along another road somewhere beyond the field behind the cluster of trees. We lingered till the sound of the car was gone, then continued on toward the truck and drove back to the Hansom House.
    As we got near it I started to remove the spare field jacket Augie had given me. He told me to keep it for as long as I needed. When we parked at the curb on Elm Street we shook hands and I stepped back out into the bitter cold. Augie waved and pulled away as I started up the path toward the door. It wasn’t till his truck had turned the corner onto Railroad Plaza and was half down the block and my hand was about to grip the door knob that I heard the sound of footsteps suddenly behind me.
    I started to turn but someone slammed into me from behind, the length of his body against mine, and jacked me up against the wall alongside the door, pinning me. I knew right off that whoever the asshole was, he outweighed me significantly, and I could tell by his breath that he was a smoker.
    I couldn’t see his face, I couldn’t turn my head around far enough. My left cheek was hard against the wall, my right ear near his mouth. His breath breezed into me when he spoke.
    “You don’t want to push your luck, kid,” he grunted. “Just forget what you saw, understand? If you don’t, I’m going to shit some serious hurt your way.”
    The only part of me that I could move was my feet. I turned them, swinging my toes to the left, as if trying to point them behind me. I knew the only escape was a reversal. I inched my toes a bit at a time. It was the only way to go. I needed to buy a little time, maybe piss him off so he’d back up to take a swing at me and I could make my move.
    “Fuck you, asshole,” I said.
    “Try a little of this, motherfucker.”
    I sensed his right hand move then toward my back, as if in a stabbing motion, and then I heard the crack of electricity. There was nothing I could do. The stun gun was pressed into my right kidney and a charge sailed through me. It was like taking a hit from a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.
    He pulled his right hand back and I buckled, but he wouldn’t let me fall, kept me jacked up against the wall, hard.
    “Still feel brave, motherfucker?” he said. I didn’t get to respond. I heard the stun gun test charge again, and then he leaned close to me and said, “Have a little more, you know you want it.”
    He fired another shot through me. The electricity raced along every inch of my body in a matter of a second. My legs gave out again but he continued to hold me up.
    “Hurts, doesn’t it?” he hissed. “Do yourself a favor, remember it. Forget what you saw and remember how this feels. Next time I set it on high and zap your balls till there’s nothing left but smoke.”
    My legs came back to me more slowly this time. When they did, I turned my feet even more.
    “And they told me to look out for you, that you were some kind of badass, some kind of Judo-man. You don’t seem so bad to me.” He leaned in close to me then, closer than he had been so far. “I wonder if your friend is liking this as much as you are.”
    My head turned enough then so I could find his eyes. They were small, hateful slits.
    “You don’t like that, do you? Too bad all you can do about it is stand here and take my shit.”
    It was then I moved.
    The instant the stun gun was off me I spun between him and the wall and crouched slightly, grabbing his balls with my right hand and squeezing with everything I had. I moved fast, surprising him. I could feel my legs tremble as I drove him backward, my right shoulder in his chest, and hooked his right leg with my left arm for a takedown. He fell at once onto the porch, landing with a crash on the planks. I landed hard on top of him, twisting his balls like a door knob before letting go and trapping his right arm between my left arm and my rib cage and torquing his elbow till I heard a sickening pop. The stun gun hit the floor of the porch and bounced twice and then lay there. I flung it into the bushes. Then I balanced myself over him and landed a half-dozen elbow shots to his head, bouncing it off the planks.
    When he wasn’t fighting back with his one good arm or screaming or moving any longer, I got up and started