The skater stands at attention. “I’m Captain Danger!” he yells at the top of his lungs, shouting like he’s responding to a drill sergeant. “And this is the Splitting Headache!”
“Oh God,” Eddie blurts, his face immediately faltering. He settles into the passenger seat and skeptically eyes the young man.
The skater turns away from us, then stops, considering something. Suddenly, he changes direction, jogging over to the passenger side.
Eddie rolls down his window. “Yes?”
The skater leans in. He acknowledges me with a casual upward chin tilt, then turns his attention back to Eddie. “Hey, can you crank up some Reel Big Fish?”
“I have no idea what you’re saying to me,” Eddie sighs.
“You got any ska?”
“Absolutely fucking not,” Eddie retorts, then rolls up his window before the young man can respond. Eddie turns to me. “I’m really sorry about this, sport. I wanted it to be a wholemoment, and now it’s just a goddamn clown show … not that there’s anything wrong with a proper clown show.”
“What is this?” I murmur again, now more to myself than to Eddie. My eyes stay glued on the skater as he moves back through our headlights, crossing the alley and approaching a dumpster on the other side.
“It’s an embarrassment, is what it is,” Eddie retorts. “But we’ll find some talent tonight, don’t you worry.”
Our star analyzes the dumpster a bit, then places his skateboard on the closed plastic lid. He grips the side of the bin and hoists himself up.
“Okay, here we go!” Eddie says, excitement brewing. “This is something.”
It takes a moment for the skater to find his footing, but eventually he’s able to pick up the board and toss it onto the roof of a nearby carport. From there, he takes a smallleap and somehow manages to follow it, throwing one leg over the edge of the carport roof and then using all his strength to heave his body after.
“He shouldn’t be up there,” I say, already sensing that this simple observation is the whole point. Deep down, I know something terrible is about to happen, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
I’m psychically compelled into this state of observation, watching intently despite the terrible urge to avert my eyes.
The young man stands up, his slender frame balanced on the edge of the carport and facing the alley below. Tears are streaming down his face, defying his otherwise chipper expression. He glances over at us and gives a thumbs-up, then takes his skateboard and holds it vertically before him.
The young man takes the front edge of his wooden board and places it in his mouth, tightly gripping each side with his hands.
“Oh my fucking God,” I gasp.
Without a moment’s hesitation, the skater leans forward and tumbles from the edge of the carport. His movement is direct and unflinching, a surreal confidence in his technique as he plummets toward the pavement below. He’s full speed ahead all the way down, diving as though he’s headed toward the safety of a cool, deep swimming pool.
The whole thing takes less than a second.
The board’s bottom tip hits first, striking the pavementand immediately halting its downward momentum. All that energy radiates upward into the wood, which has been placed squarely between the young man’s jaws.
There’s an audible pop as his head snaps back at an inhuman angle, not breaking at the neck like you might expect, but at the dead center of his face. A slash of red appears across the skater’s maw in a horizontal tear, one giant smile rendered by splintered wood. His body hits the pavement with a hollow thump, followed by the soft hum of four clay wheels as a cracked, bloody skateboard rolls away.
I’m trying to speak, but no words will come out.
“Alright, fair play. That was actually pretty good,” Eddie proclaims.
Club Flamingo
Ahorrible wave of sickness washes over me, causing my entire body to reflexively heave as though I’m about to spill my own guts out of my throat. I choke a bit, opening and closing my mouth as my arms jerk from side to side, tugging against the handcuffs. A strange heat floods my nervous system, the feeling made infinitely more terrible by the fact there’s nowhere I can run and nothing I can do to quell it.
Before us in the headlights, one of the skateboarder’s arms flaps grotesquely against the concrete as blood slowly pools around him. He’s relatively still other than this, save for the aimless rolling of his eyes and the slight twitch of his gurgling tongue—a tongue that seems much too long now that his whole face has been split in half.
“Oh my fucking God, oh my fucking God,” I repeat tomyself, the anxious flame burning hotter and hotter until it sets me ablaze.
I’ve completely lost myself to the panic, no longer in control, and the feeling is just as terrible as I remember it. It takes me back to when I was a young girl, hopeless and helpless in a way I swore I’d never feel again.
Yet here I am.
