Mascara Contra Mascara
A Tale of Two MasksBy JAMES SWIFTiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 James Swift
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4502-5041-2 Contents
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Chapter One
I dab a light splotch of blood from my forehead as Bill runs toward me like a rampaging, beer-bellied rhinoceros. He charges at me in slow-motion, as I view the 200 pound
plus fourteen year old through a curtain of crimson-smattered, bleach blonde bangs. My hair waves in side to side movement, like window drapes fluttering in an early summer updraft, as a warm, musky breeze floats across the tool shed. He's only seconds away from making impact, but I view his movement in microseconds, as if watching a movie frame-by-frame. I run my tongue over my bottom lip, and temporarily gaze at the dirt-coated floorboards to my side. I slowly streak a fingertip over the dust-soaked wooden inlay, and stare at the deep, gray stain it leaves upon my flesh.
It's amazing, really, just how much you can think about in such a short period of time.
I continue to scan the area to my right; there is a small accumulation of plasma pooled upon the ruffles of a bright, blue rain tarp. Under the black light of the ceiling, my freshly spilled blood radiates a bizarre, eerie purple color; in the periphery of my vision, I spot the silvery gleam of a recently discarded razor blade, its once-shimmering edge dulled by thick, blackened smudges.
I look up at the ceiling once more; I gaze past the dangling light bulbs, and past the rafters, which are cushioned by a number of ropes, extension cords, and old mattresses, and I focus my stare upon the orange and brown balsa wood that serves as the topmost plasterwork of the outbuilding. Through a light tear in the roofing, I see a firefly quickly flash a mustard-hued explosion, before returning to the vacant, deep-blue ocean of the early afternoon sky.
For a brief moment, I note the stirring of crickets in the background, and a quaint sensation of complacency washes over me. As Bill's kneecap hurdles toward me like a flying dumbbell, my face is frozen in a state of oblivious contentment.
"Gwarghh!"
Bill slams his patella into the metallic siding of an enormous icebox while shouting a downright primitive battle cry. His kneecap barely grazes my right ear, as his leg connects with the mammoth refrigerator, resulting in a loud, reverberating thud.
"Owww!", my gargantuan cousin cries as he seeps his fingers into the slits of the icebox's open grating. With a haphazard swing of his wrist, I hear the sound of my video recorder toppling over, thus instigating an impromptu finale for the day's filming.
"Did it shut off?" I shout.
Bill continues to silently inspect the camcorder.
"Did it shut off?" I state once more, this time in a more astringent tone.
"No, I don't think" he retorts, as he cautiously scratches the side of his head while fiddling with the numerous buttons on my camcorder.
"All right, let's see just how much we managed to record," I state, as I quickly jump up from my seated positioning.
"No, it's cool, man, really. I know how this thing works, I remember all the buttons to press ..." Bill assures me.
"Dude, it's still my camera, remember?" I assertively remind my younger cousin.
"No, really, trust me, I've got it! I know how to work this thing, really, now stop messing around with it!" he shouts with considerable agitation in his voice.
"No, for God's sake, just let me look at it!"
"Dude, I got this thing!"
Our hands initialize a brief, miniature wrestling bout. As he slides his thumb across a number of buttons, I attempt to yank his hand from the camcorder by clasping my hand around his wrist. He ripostes to my fumbling about by locking his freed hand around mine, as we simply tug back and forth on one another until Bill breaks free and picks up the device.
"Now look, I told you, I know how this works! See, all I wanted to do was hit this button here and stop the recording. See!"
Sure enough, Bill flicks the button, but instead of hitting the bright, red knob that controls the recording functions of the unit, he hits the black switch underneath it.
"Oh, you big, dumb shit!" I shout. "That wasn't the stop-record button, that was the erase-all button!"
Bill's face twists into a perplexed emotion that lie somewhere between befuddlement and guilt. I simply walk towards him and unlatch the camera from his grip, motioning to him as I begin to exit the shed.
"Well, what are we going to do?" Bill inquires. "I mean, we spent all morning working on that, and I finally managed to hit that one move I've been working on, and now, all of that planning ends up going nowhere?"
I stop at the doorway, and place an open palm upon the grimy woodwork of the outbuilding's threshold. Cradling my camcorder underneath my armpit like a football helmet, I turn towards my cousin and address his concerns.
"Well, yeah, we put a lot of hard work into this morning, there's no doubt about that. The thing is, all of this is just practice, and that's it. We still have a lot of learning to do, and a lot of dues to pay before we make it to the top. We have to do more research, and more training, and work harder."
"Uh, D.J.," Bill states while staring at me with a confounded glare. "You think you might want to do something about that big ass cut on your head before you go back inside?"
Momentarily halting, I reach up and massage my hairline, feeling a thick accumulation of dried blood upon my scalp. Rubbing my index finger over the scabbed over wound, I finally press the glowing, crimson knob on the camcorder and reply, "Yeah, remind me to wash that thing before my mom sees it."
I stand in front of the bathroom mirror, flustered as I try my damnedest to mask the enormous, encrusted wound on my forehead. I squeeze out a glob of peach-tinted acne cream and spread it over the bloodied spot; instead of obfuscating the tell-tale bruise, the treatment simply made it more luminous, as what appears to be a sun dried tomato pokes out from the side of my skull.
I take a catty-corner glance at the bathroom sink and spot a container of adhesive. "You know, maybe it's not that obvious," I mentally assess. While beginning to tighten the loosened cap to the tube of glue, the heavy trampling of Bill's soles begins to rattle the hinges of the bathroom doorway.
"Hey man, old Dell made breakfast for us and ... Jesus, what did you do to that thing?"
Upon seeing my image, Bill almost spills the small mountain of food from his flimsy paper plate. "Damn, there ain't no way you're going to be able to hide that thing from your mama," he states while jamming a spoonful of heavily salted eggs into his mouth. After a few seconds of chewing, he concludes, "You might want to think about putting on a hat or something until it clears up."
Looking at the tube of adhesive with newly intrigued eyes, I close the door to my bathroom and seat myself next to Bill on my bedding. He scoops up a tennis ball sized biscuit and devours half of the buttered delicacy in one monstrous bite; with his maw a raging mixture of dough and margarine, he begins to speak through loud chomps.
"So, do you think you did it wrong?" he announces through noisy gnashes.
Continuing to rub my finger over the bumpy, hardened shell of blood on my forehead, I reply "Dude, think about it; I cut myself on purpose with a razor blade. Do you really think there's a wrong way to do that?"
"I don't know, man," Bill replies. "You could always hit a vein, or something like that. Maybe you ought to do some more research on cutting, like find a website on it or something."
As I watch Bill cram a fork smattered with equal parts fried bologna and roasted ham down his throat, I can't help but scoff at his attempt to dispel advice.
"Bill, think about what you're saying here; do you really think that someone out there would have taken the time, and the thought, and the effort to make a website solely about the proper way to slice open your forehead for a god damned wrestling match?"
Swallowing a final scoop of gravy, Bill retorts with "Well, someone had to teach the professionals how to do it, right?"
It was an oddly profound and poetic thing for him to say; very rarely did Bill hit me with statements that were so logistically sound, and his utterance certainly gave me something to ponder. "Well, I guess this means that there is a right way to bleed," I mentally note. "Now, hell if I know where to find out how."
I make my way out of my bedroom, and shuffle down the hallway to the den. As I cross over the half-completed wooden paneling of the walkway, a tubby Chihuahua speeds across the living room and slides into my sneakers gut first as it makes a quick, 45 degree pivot into the hall.
"Damn it, D.J., you better not have hit that damned dog!", my disembodied mother states as the whimpering canine slowly lifts its podgy stomach from the floor. As it sluggishly begins to scamper out the kitchen door, I gaze at its spotted brown and white coat and note that Pepe somewhat resembles a shrunken cow.
In the living room, Bill is enjoying a second breakfast platter as he takes sips from a neon green bottle of soda in between bites of bacon and sausage.
Rubbing the side of my face, I ask him how he's able to drink that stuff in tandem with such fatty foods.
"Well, how is that you're able to eat the same stuff that I eat, but you wash it down with that chalky ass coffee?"
My mother, perpetually wrapped in old blankets, addresses me from her favorite recliner. "Where in the hell did you get that cap, boy?"
"Oh, this?" I sheepishly declare while pointing at the fiery red baseball cap fit snug to my cranium. "I bought this thing back in January. This is my hockey team, remember? The finals are coming up, and I have to do my job as a loyal fan and show support for them!"
Bill rolls his eyes while patting his engorged belly. "Those losers got eliminated from the playoffs two months ago!"
He shoots me a smug smirk, as I return a glare at him that nonverbally reads "you son of a bitch ..."
"You boys like that breakfast I cooked for you?" booms a voice from beyond the copper screening of the front doorway.
"Hey, lemme get that door for you, Uncle Dell," shouts Bill, as he jogs towards the entranceway of our home. "You see, I'm willing to help, unlike that little boy of yours ..."
Bill looks back at me, with a mischievous grin stretched across his face. I simply look down at the faint blue carpet at my feet, and mutter "He's only my step-dad," underneath my breath.
"So, whatcha' got in the bucket, Dell?" asks Bill.
"Well, I went out earlier this morning, while you two faggots were out in the shed, and picked me a whole row of green beans." The six foot tall, almost sixty year old man flips his graying streaks from his eyes and dumps the translucent bucket of string beans onto a bristly rug below. "I guess you boys can call me one mean mother-shucker, can't you?"
Bill pushes out a forced chuckle as he sardonically slaps his knees. "Yeah, I'd say that's about right!" he mercifully concludes.
Once again pressing barely-audible words from my lips, I state "that's the corniest bullshit I've ever heard ..."
"You're blocking the damned TV!" my mother yells. Gently taking a sidestep, I push myself against the wall while she nods her head in approval and lights up another cigarette. I'm guessing that she's up to three packs a day now.
Bill and Dell continue to shoot the breeze while I try to fade into the drab eggshell hue of the living room wall.
"Old Dell, that's a mighty fine belt buckle you've got there ..." Bill announces as he points his finger at the bronzed caricature of a Native American stationed underneath my stepfather's bellybutton.
"Well, I believe I picked this one up at the country fair, back in late 'eighty-nine, if memory serves correct." Dell scratches the outline of the chieftain with a fat, yellowed thumbnail. "Now just between you and me, I kind of had me some reservations about picking it up ..."
"Oh, that is the shittiest thing I have ever heard!" I curtly shout towards my stepfather's vicinity.
Both Bill and Dell squint at me from afar with obvious distaste at my utterance. My cousin eventually bids farewell to my stepfather, as Dell plops himself down on the carpet and begins squeezing and crunching the viridian pods between his thick, calloused knuckles. As Bill and I begin to walk back to my bedroom, my mother makes a quick slicing motion with her hand; after we quickly jog pass the television set, she shines a brief smile before cranking the volume of the device to near earsplitting levels.
Even after closing my bedroom door, the roar of the archaic black and white television program my mother was viewing was deafening. Bill switched on the miniscule television in my room to drown out the drone emanating from the living room, as I dropped to my hands and knees and began scouring underneath my bedding.
After taking a gargantuan swig of citrus soda, Bill slams his soft drink on the headboard of my bed and begins to uncoil the wiring of a video game controller. "Whatchu looking for down there?" he implores.
I skin my hand as I brush past a cinder block, and I cut my palm on the mangled remnants of an old soda can. Running my fingertips over the mysterious terrain, I attempt to tactilely locate a wire bound notebook.
"Ugh, just trying to find a notebook I hid down here ..."
"What? Is it your spanking-off book?" my cousin tersely deduces.
"No, you dipshit, it's a book I've been working on for awhile. I've been watching a lot of matches, and I've seen a couple of clips online. I think there's a new style we can try out, something that's unique, and could get us noticed ..."
Bill takes another monstrous swig of caffeinated sugar-water from his neon green bottle and points a thick, condemning finger at my television screen.
"Dude, seriously, I can't even make out what these things are supposed to be. I mean, really! My new machine is SOO much better than this old piece of shit you got here. Look, they don't even have a ladder match mode on this thing!"
I continue to sweep the area underneath my bed, feeling the acidic burn upon my muscles as I stretch my arm as far into the cavernous abyss as I could muster. With a final push, my fingertips finally graze against the metal coils of the long-sought notebook.
"You know, Bill, if you would have gotten your big fat monkey ass up, I could have gotten to the book without having to hyperextend my elbow," I voice as I retrieve the spiral bound from its subterranean holding.
"Eh, fuck you," Bill unsympathetically retorts as he uncaps his bottle of emerald-hued cola and squeezes the contents of the plastic container down his throat. "Motherfucker! I can't believe how tough they made this guy in the game! I mean, dude, in real life, he's just a glorified jobber, and here he is kicking the shit out of me ... and I'm playing as the god damned WORLD CHAMPION! Man, this game SUCKS!"
I continue to comb for the notebook, as a small collection of debris wraps around my wrists like tree roots around the whirring tip of a drill bit.
"Bill, if you hate the game so much, why is it that you've logged on about twenty hours playing it?" I state as the bright blue notebook shines underneath my bedroom light bulb.
I push a number of old candy wrappers and raggedy magazine pages back into the void underneath my box spring, and hold the azure book in front of me. As the yellowed wattage dyes my pad a dark purple, I literally bask in its refractive glory as if a general gazing at the blueprints that would one day allot him and his troops victory.
"You see, that's just bull shit, man! There's no way a fucking cruiserweight could pick up a dude that size and hit him with a modified Brain Buster off the top rope!" Bill loudly exclaims. Feverishly pushing buttons, he shouts a string of curse words as his virtual grappler is bested by one of the shittiest wrestlers in the promotion.
"Like that shit would ever happen, you know? A guy that's never even won the cruiserweight fucking title, beating the mother fucking world champion. That's just ... that's just ..."
Bill begins to wrap the cording of the system around the game controller and takes a relatively light sip from his beloved bottle of citrus soda before concluding, "... bullshit, man. Just out and out bullshit, man."
While my cousin continues to ramble, I lay the notebook on the ruffled topography of my bulky brown comforter and begin flipping through my notes and observations. I blaze by a smattering of black and blue ink, as I desperately attempt to locate a passage scrawled in a telltale red tint.
"All right, Bill, here's what I've been working on for a few weeks. You remember a couple of days ago, when my phone line was tied up for about a day and a half?"
Bill shakes his head, his noggin indelibly filled with curiosity as I read from the spiral bound with the exuberance and certitude of an obsessed despot.
"Well, the thing was, I was downloading this one match from Japan. I've been hearing a lot about this style from some forums on the 'net, and dude, this shit right here is going to be what gets us over."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Mascara Contra Mascaraby JAMES SWIFT Copyright © 2010 by James Swift. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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