Luke's black trailblazer was double parked
in front of Eoin's apartment building causing traffic to swerve
around it; thus explaining the blaring horns. Eoin waited for a lull in
traffic, ran to the side of the car, and hopped in. Luke was twirling
a handgun around, absentmindedly eying the traffic driving by. He
grinned and pointed the gun at Eoin.
"Look what I found!" His eyes
held the gleam of a child with a new toy. "Walther PPK, Bond's
gun! .380 and small enough to hide in my nether bits!"
"Put that down! Do you even have a
license for it?" Eoin wore a horrified look, more for the simple
fact that Luke had a gun than for any actual fear for his own safety.
"A license? Have you not read the
constitution of this sovereign state, dear boy? It indicates that
individuals are encouraged to carry all manner of weaponry and do
great bodily harm to whomever has a distasteful air about them."
Luke held the gun by the barrel and hammered each point as if
pistol-whipping the steering wheel.
"I actually have read our state
constitution; it says that every individual has the right to keep and
bear arms for the defense of himself and the state." Luke
grinned and looked at me.
"Word for word, very impressive, did
you have to look that one up?"
"Of course I had to look it up,"
Eoin replied with a flustered look, "how else would you expect
me to know it?" Luke glanced over at Eoin.
"I wasn't speaking to you dear boy,
don't be absurd. But yes, everything is fine, don't you worry about
licensing." With that, he slid the gun into some hidden pocket
of his coat and started the car.
The sound of some horrid rap-punk "music"
filled the car as Luke pulled into traffic.
"...and I don't give a fuck, not a
single, solitary fuck 'cause I don't give a fuck, motherfucker!"
"What the hell are you listening to?"
Eoin asked, attempting to cover his ears.
"OPM, clever name, wouldn't you say?
And I do resent the smarmy quotations around the word music."
Luke skipped to the next track and began singing along to "Heaven
is a Halfpipe" in a beautiful, operatic, baritone. "If I
die before I wake, At least in heaven I can skate, 'Cause right now
on earth I can't do shit, Without the man fucking with it..."
Eoin did his best to fight back his growing migraine and leaned his
head against the window.
He
awoke to a peaceful voice narrating some unclassifiable fantasy
novel. Confused, he looked around and recognized the bus station.
Luke was calmly organizing a bag full of various knives and guns. He
smiled at Eoin, “I didn’t want to wake you so I put on the
Belgariad as inspiration for our journey.” Eoin wasn’t sure what
the Belgariad was or how it was inspirational but he had learned
better than to question the oddities of the strange Mr. Smythe.
“Why
are we at the bus station?” he asked groggily. Luke smiled and
zipped up his bag of weaponry,
“To
ride the bus, dear boy, to ride the bus.” And with that he was out
of the car and unloading bags and suitcases, including Eoin’s, in
front of the station.
“But
where are we going and why can’t we take your car?” Eoin did his
best to assist Luke but only managed to hoist one small bag before
the pile was complete.
“You
said it yourself, Mr. Emmerson… North.”
Their destination was Lansing,
Michigan; Eoin deduced this by the sign on the bus, which was, at the
moment, being loaded by a very angry bus driver.
“I don’t now how you managed to
get permission to bring all of this baggage and if anyone else on the
bus needs more luggage space, we’re leaving yours behind!” He
shouted at Luke who was busy grinning and tossing their bags up from
the pile they had made earlier.
The bus ride was mostly uneventful;
Luke spent the time chatting with various passengers and seemed quite
pleased with himself. Eoin sat in a window seat and continued to
listen to the audio book of the Belgariad that Luke had on his ipod.
He never considered himself a fan of fantasy but the book was
starting to grow on him.
Eventually the bus pulled up to a
ratty bus station located in what seemed to be the worst part of
Lansing. The platform was full of people loitering around and giving
Eoin and Luke stares that seemed to say, “Wait ‘til there’s no
one around.” Luke was distractedly counting an assortment of cash,
jewelry, and watches which he had apparently collected from the
passengers on the bus. “Why don’t you call your friend?” He
muttered in Eoin’s direction as he started sorting his new
collection into various pockets.
“And what friend would that be?”
Eoin asked, not sure how Luke would know any of his friends.
“That layabout musician friend of
yours, what’s his name, Peter MacDonald I think.” Eoin stopped
walking and looked at Luke.
“How do you know Pete?” Luke
continued walking for a few feet before he noticed that Eoin had
stopped. He turned to him with an impatient look.
“I don’t know him at all, I simply
am aware that he is your friend and he lives in Lansing. Now do hurry
along so we can remove ourselves from this neighborhood; it seems
as if the natives are getting restless.” Eoin looked back towards
the bus station and saw several large and unfriendly looking men
motioning at them in a less than cordial manner. “Perhaps they
noticed my newfound property. Whatever they want, it is a bit too
late to walk away from it now.” Luke grinned and started walking
back toward the men who were now leaning in the window of an old
Cadillac, speaking with the driver. One of them looked up from the
car and signaled the rest of them. “Please do remain back, dear
boy; if it would make you feel safer, the blue bag contains the guns.
I’ll be right back.” He leapt up onto the curb and smiled down
at the men around the car. “Hello gentlemen! A word that I do use
in it’s modern and meaningless form, how are you today?”
“Tha fuck you want?” A large man
in the center of the group swaggered up to Luke.
“Well, I couldn’t help but notice
that you seemed to be eyejobbing both myself and my young assistant
over there.” Luke motioned at Eoin and smiled yet again. “Now I’m
okay with the coloreds, being a progressive thinking man myself. But
my assistant is from Ann Arbor and I’m sure you’re well aware of
how ‘help at a distance’ those young liberals tend to be.” The
large man’s face scrunched up and he seemed ready to say something
but Luke calmly continued. “To sum up, if you’re going to attempt
to separate me from my newfound property, please get it over with.
We’re on our way to visit friends and we don’t want to have scum
like yourselves following us in that pimp mobile or whatever the kids
are calling them these days.”
The big man grabbed Luke by the collar
and pinned him up against the Cadillac. Eoin, in a moment of panic,
began to reach for the blue bag. He paused, thought again and brought
out his mobile phone, preparing to call the police. As he dialed, he
saw Luke grinning as the men hit him over and over again. Eventually
he got through to the local dispatch and gave them a brief summary of
what was happening. He was told to calm down and that an officer was
on the way.
Meanwhile, the gang of men was rifling
through Luke’s pockets and, amazingly, coming up empty handed. They
were obviously becoming more and more frustrated as they discovered
more and more empty pockets. Luke was still grinning maniacally,
blood streaming down his face. He was no longer looking at Eoin
though. Instead he was staring at a man standing off to the side. The
man was black, in his early thirties, and either homeless or at the
extremes of poverty. The man wore a pained expression and seemed to
be waiting or listening for something.
Eoin put the man out of his mind and
scanned the street for police, nothing yet, where were they? He
looked back at Luke, still grinning and now beginning to lap up the
blood as it poured down his face. He whispered something to the large
man in the center.
“You got a secret? The fuck you
talkin bout?” He looked at the rest of his crew as if for support,
shrugged, and leaned down. A reasonable man would see no danger in
this action; Luke was beaten to the point where he shouldn’t even
be conscious and he had been checked for weapons. Unfortunately for
our nameless villain, these were not normal circumstances. As the man
leaned down, Luke bit his eyeball and reached up with both hands. In
one hand he had a knife, which he quickly plunged into the side of
the man’s neck; with the other hand, he lit the man’s dreadlocks
on fire. Still biting onto the man’s eyeball, he let out a
bloodcurdling scream of joy and wrenched his head back, tearing the
eyeball from the socket. While this was happening, the homeless man
came running up and started fighting two of the other men that had
been beating Luke.
Eoin had no idea what to do. The large
man was screaming as his friends attempting to put out the fire now consuming his hair, Luke was literally howling and spraying blood
out of his mouth at the driver of the Cadillac, and the homeless man
was taking on three young gang members by himself. He felt like he
should do something to help but he knew next to nothing about
fighting and he certainly didn’t want to be holding an unlicensed
gun when the police finally showed up. Luckily the decision was soon
taken out of his hands as the group of men pulled their injured
leader into the Cadillac and drove away.
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