#czelk

Whelk sat in the front seat of his car, a bottle in a paper bag held slackly in his hand. The green number above the dashboard told him reproachfully that midnight had come and gone an hour ago.

Whelk paid it no mind. He was busy trying to talk himself into calling it a night so he could begin the process of sobering up and driving back to his shitbox apartment.

But hell, there wasn’t much to choose between his crappy car and his crappy apartment, and anyway there was only a little more left in the bottle.

He heard the whisper of tires on asphalt and light sandblasted his hidey-hole as a car turned into the parking light, throwing the detritus of his car’s interior into unflattering relief.

The parking lot’s only streetlight had been busted for months Necking teenagers?

Whelk frothed with hatred, hot and sick.

The other driver cut their engine, and Whelk was once more assaulted by the deafening shrill of cicadas. They left their headlights on, and everything was washed in harsh brights and harsh darks, a tv set with the contrast set way too high.

A figure got out of the other car. Whelk waited for the slam of a car door, but the newcomer left it hanging open.

He wondered belatedly if he was about to be mugged, or perhaps carjacked.

No. A quick look at the other car showed that it was a hell of a lot nicer than Whelk’s. Garish. Familiar, too.

Whelk only had a moment to let that final realization ping worryingly around his head before the newcomer was leaning up against his driver’s side door.

Whelk grudgingly rolled down his window.

Kavinsky was an assault on the eyes.

“Don’t you know it’s a school night, mister?”

“Is it?” Whelk mumbled. Shit. Well, it wouldn’t be his first time teaching with a hangover.

“Recognized the faculty sticker on your piece of shit car.”

Peevishness was burning a hole in Whelk’s gut. What was it with the Kavinskys of the world and their fetish for constantly reminding him of his fall from grace?

“You sleeping here or something?”

Whelk did not answer. He merely glared.

Kavinsky’s face split into a slow, insolent grin. “Did you really kill a kid?”

Had he really said that? A rill of sweat trickled down Whelk’s ribs. He couldn’t move, paralyzed.

“How—?” He rasped, but Kavinsky was laughing, a sound like a dog having a seizure.

“You really think I didn’t check this shithole out before I moved here? Your daddy loses everything and your best friend goes missing the same day? I bet the po-po held you as long as they could, but wherever you stashed that fucker they must not have found him yet.”

Whelk couldn’t speak.

“Now me,” Kavinsky was saying thoughtfully, “If I killed someone? For damn sure I wouldn’t stick around.” His New Jersey drawl was obnoxious in the closeness of the night. “I’d move to a different state. Down south, maybe, where no one had even heard the name Kavinsky.”

Whelk did not speak.

“‘Course some of these rich bitches in Henrietta make me look like white trash.” His Cheshire smile was a neat row of headstones in the dark. “What does that make you, mister?”

Does this make you white trash now?

Unsteadily, Whelk placed a hand on the handle of his door, and Kavinsky obligingly stepped back to let him open it. Whelk caught himself with a hand on the roof of the car.

He felt ragged, unshaven.

Dangerous.

Outlined in shadow against the oblique glare of the Mitsu’s headlight, Kavinsky looked sharp enough to cut him. The left side of his face slid sickeningly into darkness, and for a moment Whelk imagined Kavinsky stepping forward and throwing his face into indelible relief, crumpled up and ruined.

Czerny had made a noise like a stepped-on gerbil when Whelk had hit him. A squeal and a crunch.

Whelk wondered for a moment if he was gonna be sick.

“Hey, now,” Kavinsky was saying, and Whelk blinked his eyes open to see he had his hands fisted in the front of Kavinsky’s wife beater, the heavy gold chain at his throat draped across Whelk’s knuckles, cold and bright in the half-light. Kavinsky’s shirt was bunched up around his armpits, his back probably gritty with sweat and dirt, pressed up against the passenger side window of his masturbatory boyish fantasy of a car.

Whelk felt a slide of something near his hip and he tipped his head down, still not loosening his grip, and saw Kavinsky lifting his worn-bald wallet from his pocket with two fingers.

Thief.

One-handed, Kavinsky flipped open Whelk’s wallet. With his teeth, he drew forth the foil-wrapped prize of his conquest.

He tossed the wallet at Whelk’s chest, and Whelk wasn’t fast enough to catch it. It landed in the dust at his feet.

Straightening up, he found Kavinsky draped over the hood of his car, not looking at him, the condom held up between his fingers.

There was something wrong about it, the closeness of the sultry air, the smell of tar off the parking lot, the impenetrable charcoal gray of the night so violently penetrated by the Mitsu’s anti-glare headlights.

Kavinsky’s skin was waxy and sunken, the dip between his shoulder blades disconcertingly obvious. He looked like a corpse. Still essentially a person, just missing that one little thing that made it tick.

Whelk was half-hard.

He was going to be sick.

His fingers found the condom, and after a moment’s fumbling, gave up and tore it open with his teeth.

He had the wherewithal to know he ought to do something to prepare them both, but couldn’t quite bring himself to lay hands on the body beneath him. He spat, and let the thick glob of it dribble from his lips down the clef Kavinsky’s boney ass. Kavinsky shuddered, maybe at the sound, maybe the unpleasant texture of Whelk’s spit. Maybe merely in anticipation of what was about to happen.

It didn’t matter to Whelk. He planted his hands flat against the hood of the Mitsubishi on either side of Kavinsky’s body, metal still warm under his hands.

The first shove made him gasp.

Whelk couldn’t see it in the dark, but faced away from his Latin teacher, Kavinsky opened his mouth and took his gold chain between his teeth to stop it hitting against his chest. He was grinning in triumph, head muddy as pond water, quiet on the surface, quiet underneath.