Hurt Again

Hurt Again

       By D. Ouglyer

By rights, Roger Jean Handdinkin should have been an invalid had all things gone as per usual. But, since fate had, or God had, or some divine or natural seminality had, stepped in in the nick of time, R. J. H. lived to tell about his mishap and lived well at that. 
       Handdinkin’s car, a 1997 Lincoln Continental with dual exhaust and orange and yellow racing flames along the hood and sides, received frequent maintenance at an exclusive garage in the trendy Shirearbor district of Manhattan boulevard in eastside Toronto. His bathtub, one of those large porcelain ones that writers never tire of including when they wish to paint a picture of opulence, bore an eighteen karate gold Handdinkin monogram along the plump, round front edge. His girlfriend’s name there, too, in smaller gold lettering, made her the talk of tinsel town, pretty as she was, blonde in feel and tone, pointy-shoed and pointy-heeled in poise and texture, flippant as a seal in your bathtub. Groceries came delivered to his door from the famed Greek markets and fruitiers of Fifth Street and Vine. Wine, chocolate, clothing, garden tools, wood paneling, light and plumbing fixtures, stereo equipment, pets and each other category of daily well-heeled need arrived from an address accustomed to dealing with and for the rich and famous.

       Handdinkin, on a day in February, when he should have been asleep and resting for the next day’s glorious events (his mother coming from the west coast to visit, and along with her a whole zoo of birds, reptiles, dogs, cats, and pigeons), he instead decided to get in one last grand phoo phoo with Brian. Brian Hybride lived in a section of T.O. with cars along the curb that did not move from one month to the next, with sofas beside each third dumpster, with narrow fire-escape ladders running down the side of apartments into vacant lots, and with girls and boys with bright lipstick standing long and patient at the corner, visible from the kitchen window. Both Brian and H. lifted weights, to keep able to ward off the unwashed. Brian grew Marigolds in his window flower box. Orange and yellow as the sun in your eyes they glowed along the east bricks under the roof overhang and in the bluest sky.  

       Brian loved Marigold Harems (inexplicably changed one day from Harms to Harems--better than Breezy Meadows or Wild Windspirit) to distraction, but not as you or I might. More to the fact, he loved her the way a dog loves a man who feeds it. Marigold’s Dry Cleaners, where Brian worked for Marigold, gave him his salary, but also his best side. Here a few dear friends, most prominent of whom was the woman mentioned above, owner of the place, thought Brian a hero. He had saved the store twice from robbers who on one occasion pointed a gun at Marigold behind the counter and pulled the trigger but failed to kill because the gun misfired. Brian heard and looked, leapt out of his kiosk, landed on one of the killers and stunned him, while at the same time reaching for and grappling the assailant who was turning on him with the weapon. Brian secured a hold on the gun barrel and turned it toward this villain just as he pulled the trigger. This worthy shot himself in the groin, the ballistic travelling through his penis and down into his scrotum from which it exited into the cash register (he being bent over at the time with his rear pointing up). He screamed and held himself and fell to the floor.

Brian pointed the gun at the other robber and kept him thus from rising off the floor. He turned to the man in pain and stood with his boot on his face and stepped down. He stepped and then put the other boot on his face, too, and stepped up and down as if he were marching, or doing step exercises. The one underneath screamed between steps when his mouth was not covered by a sole. Then Brian did the heroic thing. He jumped up in the air and landed with his pointed knees in the pit of the assailant’s stomach. The man lost consciousness and Brian turned toward the other lying there. He hurt him, too. He shot him first in the foot, through the heel and then the arch. He shot him in the shoulder on both sides. When he found that this was a Hell’s Angel, from what the prostrate one said, he intensified his activities and hurt him repeatedly until this one lost consciousness, too. Then Brian phoned the police and they carted the robbers off to prison.

       Handdinkin, curiously, got hurt as a direct result of this incident. Coming around the corner of his house after work one day, he met with someone who appeared to be a gardener from the look of his clothes, but who drew a gun and asked H. to step inside the garage. H. did so, knowing. The man raised the pistol and pulled the trigger, but H. moved his head to one side at that precise moment and the bullet only grazed his temple. The mobster (a brother of one of the men in prison, who had taken up purloining after his kin's incarceration left a vacancy in that field of work and in that area of the city) pointed the gun again and pulled the trigger, but a split second before it went off, H. lunged for the hand of his attacker and holding it, sat down on the floor. The gun fired between the shooter’s legs and the bullet ricocheted off the cement up straight into his groin and traveled through his torso toward his heart. It stopped an inch from that organ or otherwise this unfortunate would surely have been killed. As it was, he fell, writhing in great pain, holding his crotch from which blood streamed (which you could tell from the stain rapidly growing up at the joint of his pant legs) and at the same time clutching his stomach, perforated by the wayward bullet. H., too, hurt his attacker. He stomped on his face twice, he pulled his ears and twisted them till one of them tore. He stuck a broom handle in his mouth and pushed downward till the person gagged. H. did a variety of things to him, and then called the police who found the robber naked, hurt, injured and forlorn on H.’s floor. They took him way and he is now serving time in a jail in east T. O.

       Brian and H. heard about each other and for a year now they had been lovers. With mother arriving, H. felt he deserved to have a last shindig with Brian before that venerable lady’s menageric arrival and stay, and that was what he arranged before the day was older than a newborn's placement in an incubator. They liked to massage each other, and quite violently at that. Sometimes these massages led to sitting on faces and even, if the truth be told, to kicking each other quite forcefully in the head or groin with boots on.