Baptism

by

Steve Stark

Tattooed knuckles of a ham hock fist slam into the soft skin of a face fifteen years fresh, marking it forever. The lad falls. His mates stand by, too stunned and scared of the men. But he’s not. He’s mostly confused. He knows he hasn’t done fuck all to upset anyone, that he was just walking home after a few ciders in the park.

This is a mistake, he thinks. They got me confused with someone, some man like them.

He’s tall after all.

The lad gets up. It’s not a struggle. He doesn’t stagger. He’s fit and most falls are still easy to shrug off at his age. There’s nothing confrontational about the action. It’s a natural impulse for him to simply get up. He doesn’t realize how weak that makes these two men look, how pathetic. He should’ve stayed down, but in his dazed mind he’s still thinking it’s a misunderstanding. These are grown blokes with beer bellies and bald heads. Why would they want to batter a kid?

‘What’d you hit me for?’ he asks, spraying blood with every word. ‘I don’t know you.’

‘Leave it out,’ shouts a woman passing by. There are others too, on their way home after bars have shut. No one likes what they’re seeing, but not enough to do anything about it.

‘Oi!’

One of the other boys finds the balls speak up now. ‘He’s fifteen, y’cunts,’ he tells the men, thinking they might see sense.

He gives them too much credit.

‘Well I’m firty-free an’ ‘e’s firty-four, so wot?’

The lager louts chuckle fake, hollow laughs to mask their shame and one swings again, aiming to put this tall lad down quickly so they can move on.

Only this time the lad blocks the shot. It’s an even bigger mistake than getting up. They’re both throwing bones at him then and although defensive arms take the sting off a few, two shots connect hard, sending his mind to oblivion, his lanky body to the concrete.

Satisfied, the thugs take off while the boys go to their fallen friend.

He hears their voices calling him back from the void.

‘-fuck was that about? Fucking wankers.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘Nah, he’s moving. You alright, mate?’

The downed lad starts getting up. His mates make helping gestures, but they don’t need to. He’s standing on his own steam. There’s something uncanny about it though, something which keeps them from saying much. One’s feeling guilt at not having tried to intervene, no matter how futile it would’ve been. The other wonders how he might’ve acted in the same situation. They both see the black eye and split lip, looking like a zipper left undone, blood dripping down his shirt.

But it’s none of that. It’s their mate’s demeanour that unnerves them. He’s not crying, not upset at all, and there’s a different look in his eye, something that wasn’t there before.

‘Which way did they go?’ he asks.

Bio:

Steve Stark is the author of the satirical splatter punk horror “A Hot Dose of Hell” and the anthology “Violent Ends”. An avid fan of crime and horror fiction, he tends to write a mixture of both. Steve draws inspiration from a misspent youth in an impoverished corner of Britain and an imagination fuelled by 80’s video nasties and pulp paperbacks.

Several of Steve’s short stories have been published by Hellbound Books while his articles can be found at NoSellOutProductions and Whatculture.com. You can find Steve himself on twitter and goodreads.