Demon Town, page 17
“I said are you travelling solo tonight? I don’t see Mikey here.”
“Yeah, I’m just on my way home. Mikey, Milo and I were just at the drama club’s Christmas party.”
“Oh, that’s right. How was it?”
“Good. The play was pretty funny and the meal was really good.”
They went back and forth almost yelling in each other’s ear just to be heard. Lisa’s hair tickled his nose, but Mac made no effort to brush it away from his face. He would have been quite content to carry on this conversation all night.
“There you go, Lisa.” The bartender said as he slid the tray full of drinks back to her.
“Duty calls. I’ll talk to you in a bit, Mac.”
Lisa flashed that smile that made him weak in the knees and picked up her tray. Mac felt a pain in his chest as he watched her walk away and for a moment he thought of following her. Thinking better of it, he realized that she would be back again soon enough with another order. He would wait here. Mac turned to the bartender and held his index finger up.
“I’ll get another Bud, please. I’m just going to the can. I’ll be right back.”
Mac made his way through the crowd to the men’s washroom. He found an open urinal beside some high school kid who was clearly three sheets to the wind. Doing his best to avoid eye contact, Mac stared straight ahead at the poetic passages scribbled on the wall. He hoped that the guy beside him would just go about his business and leave him alone. If there is one thing that Mac hated, it was someone who wanted to talk to him while he was taking a piss.
“Hey man, how’s it going?”
“Okay.” Mac replied biting his lip. ‘Stop talking, stop talking, stop talking.’
“Dude, I am so wasted!”
Mac kept staring straight ahead. He would not encourage Piss Willie Pete here, whatsoever. Mac could see him out of the corner of his eye rocking back and forth clumsily and wouldn’t be surprised if he fell over backwards. He reeked of beer and could barely focus his eyes. The bathroom door opened up and Mac heard two sets of footsteps walk in behind them. One person stopped directly behind him, while the other one walked behind Chatty Cathy next to him.
“Scram.”
The high school student glanced over his shoulder and tipped back and forth some more.“Wait your turn, man. I’m not done yet.”
Two burly arms grabbed the kid by the shoulders and picked him several inches up off the floor. One second the student hung suspended in midair beside Mac and the next he was flying through the air towards the door. He landed in a heap at the feet of another person just walking into the bathroom. Two more burly arms picked up the student with little effort and roughly stood him back on his feet.
“Leave.” Archie said putting his index finger to his lips.
The door opened again and Tyson walked in. He held the door open for the student who quickly looked over at Mac and abruptly turned and hustled past Tyson out of the bathroom.
“Watch the door. Nobody comes in.” Tyson walked past Archie who turned and closed the bathroom door behind him and stood guard outside. “MacInqueer. Where’s your big boyfriend at tonight?” Tyson sneered.
Mac was scrambling for a way out of this, but any way that he looked at his predicament he didn’t see this ending well.
“My big boyfriend?”
“Stevens, wise ass.”
“Oh, Mikey. Didn’t you see him sitting out there? Big guy, kind of hard to miss?” Mac stalled for all he was worth. He glanced over both shoulders as Tyson’s two buddies slowly circled behind him. One was Jughead, no surprise there. The other was Brad Stewart. He was just as big as Archie and Jughead, but Mac had never had any trouble with him before...until now.
“Bull shit. He hasn’t been in here all night. You came in by yourself.” Tyson had that arrogant smile going and was quite enjoying this. The odds were in his favor at 3 to 1. 4 to 1 if you counted Archie outside the door. He knew Mac was bluffing.
“Oh, that’s right. I’m meeting him here.” A plan formed in Mac’s mind. He couldn’t make all three of his new bathroom acquaintances see Mikey come crashing through the washroom door, but he could make Tyson see his large friend charging to the rescue and hopefully that would give Mac enough of an opportunity to escape. He was just about to plant the image in Tyson’s brain when Jughead rattled his skull from behind with a forearm shiver. Mac crashed violently into the urinal wall, but managed to catch himself before he fell. Not that it mattered. Jughead and Stewart each grabbed him and stood him back up with his arms pinned behind him.
Tyson started unloading punches before Mac even had a chance to get his bearings. A right-hand caught him flush in the nose. A left caught him square on the right cheek bone. Another punch grazed off Mac’s right eyebrow as he tried to avoid the punch by dropping to the floor, but Jughead and Stewart held him tight and pulled him back up.
“Hold him steady.” Tyson hissed. Jughead grabbed Mac’s hair at the back and held his head in place. “I don’t know what you fuckers did to me at the Turbo, but I will fuck up each and every one of you pricks before I’m done.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You just started spazzing out-”
Tyson hammered another right directly towards Mac’s mouth and caught him square. Mac was seeing stars already and pain pulsed through every square inch of his face. He felt his lip split open and blood smeared over the left side of his face.
“What’s that, smart ass?” Tyson chuckled gleefully. “I didn’t quite catch that. My fist was shoved into your mouth.”
Mac was barely hanging on to consciousness now. He could feel himself starting to slip away into darkness.
“Unh-uhn. We’re not done yet, MacInqueer.”
Tyson delivered left and right body shots to Mac’s stomach and then followed that with an upper cut that caught Mac just below his left eye. Everything went black then and Mac’s knees buckled and his head hung forward limply. Tyson threw two more punches to Mac’s abdomen before Brad Stewart released his grip and let Mac fall forward.
“He’s had enough, Tyson.”
Jughead let go, as well and Mac crumpled to the floor face down. Blood trickled from his face and pooled on the tile floor beneath him.
“Fuck that!” I’ll say when he’s had enough!” Tyson snapped and kicked Mac twice in the ribs.
Brad Stewart stepped in between Tyson and the unconscious Mac. “Jesus, man! You’re going to kill him!”
Tyson made an attempt to step around Stewart, but Jughead stopped him. “Stewie’s right, Ty. You’ve fucked him up real good, but you can’t afford to get in any more trouble.”
“Yeah, man. Let’s get out of here.”
Tyson wasn’t happy about having to quit, especially when he had plenty more damage to inflict. He held his two hands up high before him and examined all the blood on his knuckles.
“Fine. Just as well, my hands were starting to take a shit kicking from bouncing off his face.”
Jughead gave Tyson a slap on the back and grinned as he watched Mac lying unconscious on the floor. He then walked over to the door and pulled it open just a crack and peered through. Archie’s face appeared in the opening.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“You tell me.” Jughead smiled and opened up the door a bit more to let Archie see the carnage.
“Holy shit, Tyson! You’re a fucking animal!”
They grinned at each other like they were all king shit. As Tyson walked out of the bathroom, Archie high-fived him. A crowd of onlookers peered past the football players as they exited the men’s washroom. The hammered student who had fled from the bathroom moments earlier caught a glimpse of Mac lying on the floor and Tyson watched his reaction.
“You didn’t see anything.” Tyson said as he walked by him. “Anybody says anything and we’ll fuck you up even worse.”
Seconds later they were out the door and gone into the night. Mac was just starting to regain consciousness when a bouncer entered the bathroom. There had been a small skirmish at the other side of the bar that the bouncers had been attending to. Once the dispute over whose turn it was to use the pool table had been diffused, this particular bouncer noticed the crowd outside of the men’s bathroom. He pushed his way through the crowd and found Mac struggling to sit up.
“Who did this to you?” the bouncer asked as he examined Mac’s messed up face. His left eye was completely swollen shut, his bottom lip was badly cut and the bouncer couldn’t tell if all the blood was coming from Mac’s lip or his nose. Mac ran his hands over his face and took stock of the damage. The flashing stars that he was seeing in front of him were slowly starting to dissipate, but there was a terrible ringing in his head. By the look on the bouncer’s face and the faces of the onlookers standing around him, he knew that he didn’t look any better than he felt.
“How bad is it?” he managed to spit out with his swollen lip.
“You’re going to need stitches in that lip and your nose might be broken.” The bouncer grimaced. “Who did this to you?”
Somebody handed Mac a paper towel and he held it to his lip. Within seconds it was soaked red. He ran his tongue over the damaged lip and flinched when he found a tender spot.
“Don’t know.” Mac lied. “They jumped me from behind.”
“How many were there?”
Mac pretended to try and recall the incident. “Two, maybe three. I think.”
“But, you didn’t see their faces?”
“No, they hit me from behind when I was taking a leak.”
The bouncer looked over his shoulder at the crowd around them. “Did anybody see anything?”
There were a few shoulder shrugs, but mostly lots of head shaking. If somebody had witnessed something, nobody was stepping forward with any information. The bouncer turned back towards Mac and his eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Was it the football players?” he whispered to Mac.
“I don’t know, man. Really. It happened so fast. One second I’m taking a piss, the next I’m kissing the floor with blood red lipstick.”
“Okay, sorry.” The bouncer stood up and held a hand out to Mac. “I think that you better go to the hospital, though.”
Mac grabbed his hand and the bouncer pulled him up. Pushing the crowd back with one arm, the bouncer put the other around Mac’s shoulder and led him out of the bathroom. Mac noticed the student standing there with a scared look in his eyes. As he walked past him, Mac shook his head ever so slightly as he glanced in the student’s direction.
“Can you drive?” the bouncer asked Mac.
“I probably shouldn’t, but I think I...”
“Oh, my God! Mac, what happened to you?” Lisa was just going to get another order of drinks when she saw Mac and the bouncer.
“I slipped in the bathroom.” He tried to smile, but even that made him to flinch in pain.
Lisa studied his swollen features and the blood stains all over his face and shirt. She shook her head in disbelief. “You need to get to the hospital, Mac. Are you okay to drive? Never mind, let me get this order and I’ll take you there in my car.”
Mac was caught off guard by Lisa’s remark and as she walked away he smiled to himself again through the pain that shot through his lip. The bouncer gave Mac a questioning look as if he was wondering why Mac was lucky enough to have Lisa drive him to the hospital. Mac shrugged his shoulders and if his lip hadn’t been so swollen, you probably wouldn’t have been able to wipe the smile off his face.
The bouncer sat Mac down at a table by the exit and when he was sure that he was okay, he went back to interrogating the patrons that were seated by the bathroom. Judging by their actions, he wasn’t getting the answers that he was looking for. When Lisa returned, she handed Mac a wet bar towel and took the blood soaked paper towel from him and threw it in a garbage can. She had her coat on already and dug her car keys out of her pocket. She bent down and examined his face once more. As she did so, she took the wet towel from him and wiped some blood off the side of his face and handed it back to him.
“You’re a mess.”
“Yeah? You should see the other guy. His knuckles are the real mess.”
Lisa grinned and shook her head. “Okay. Come on, Rocky.”
She lifted under Mac’s right arm and helped him up and guided him outside as Mac was having trouble navigating with the wet towel over his left eye.
“I think that I can probably drive myself to the hospital. You must be busy...”
“It’s okay. It’s been quiet tonight until you showed up. I’ll make sure that I’m back for last call.”
Lisa unlocked the passenger door of her Grand Torino and opened it for Mac.
“You know my mom always warned me about getting into cars with strangers.” Mac said.
“Yeah, just don’t get too much blood on my interior.” Lisa chuckled as she cleared some clothes and candy wrappers off the seat so Mac could sit down. Once he was seated, Lisa hopped in on the driver’s side and started the car up. It hadn’t been as cold lately, but she gave it a couple of minutes to warm up.
“Thanks for doing this.” Mac said as he peered around his towel at her. For as much pain as he was in, the fact that Lisa Thomas was giving him a ride to the hospital in her car more than made up for it.
“No problem. You’re in no condition to drive and it was bad for business having you standing there bleeding all over the place.” Lisa winked at him and a warm feeling surged through his body and he thought to himself that he should get beat up more often if it meant that Lisa was going to chauffer him to the hospital.
“Dr. Baker’s going to have to stitch up your lip, but from what I can see your nose isn’t broken and everything else is just swelling and bruising.” The nurse who examined Mac looked at him right away as it was a quiet night in the emergency room. “He’s just in another room right now tending to another patient.”
Mac cringed at the mention of Dr. Baker’s name. The guy was enough of a pompous prick already, but he also had a reputation for not being overly fond of sports related injuries or alcohol related trouble. If a patient was suffering from either of the above, Dr. Baker would forget the freezing when tending to a wound.
Lisa sat in the waiting room as Mac waited to be attended to. He thought that she was just going to drop him off and be on her way, but she said that she would wait for him which was good because he had no idea how to get a hold of Mikey or Milo. They were probably at a house party somewhere. Lisa asked Mac if he wanted her to call his parents.
“No, definitely not.” he replied. “My dad will freak out if he hears about this and my mom will freak out even more if she sees me like this. I’ll deal with them tomorrow.”
Mac fidgeted on the examining table as he waited for Dr. Baker. He tried to think up the best explanation that he could for what happened, but he doubted that Dr. Baker would buy any of it. Mac held his hand up to his mouth and breathed into his palm. He hadn’t had that much to drink lot this evening, but he could smell the beer on his breath and there wasn’t much chance that Dr. Baker would miss it. He was in enough pain already and from what he knew of the good doctor, he would make sure that Mac suffered some more.
“Mr. MacIntosh, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Dr. Baker walked in with that arrogant air about him and Mac could tell that he was already in a pissy mood because he had to be called in to tend to patients in the middle of the night. Without waiting for a response, he checked Mac’s left eye for damage by forcing the swollen eyelids apart. Without warning he grabbed onto Mac’s nose and moved it back and forth.
“Does this hurt?”
“Yes!” Mac tried not to scream.
“Well, it doesn’t seem to be broken. Let’s take a look at your mouth.”As Mac pulled the towel away from his still bleeding lip Dr. Baker shook his head. “That’s going to require stitches. From the smell of you, I think that we can skip the freezing. You should have enough alcohol in your system already to numb the pain.” Dr. Baker started to prepare the needle and thread. “So, I’m assuming that you were drinking and driving again and this is the result of it?”
Mac didn’t need to listen to this. He was just about to stand up and tell Dr. Baker to go fuck himself when Lisa appeared.
“Actually, some creep was giving me a hard time at work and Mac stepped in to help me. Hi, Dr. Baker.”
Dr. Baker turned away from Mac and smiled at Lisa. Mac had never seen him smile before and gave Lisa a funny look.
“Hello, Lisa. How are you tonight?”
“Better now, thanks to Mac.” Lisa replied and winked at Mac when Dr. Baker turned back towards him to start stitching him up. “The guy was a real pig and wouldn’t leave me alone. I was getting pretty scared until Mac stepped in and took a beating because of me. Is he going to be okay, Dr. Baker? I feel terrible that he got hurt trying to defend me.”
“Mr. MacIntosh has some pretty bad bruising, but nothing is broken. I’m just going to stitch up his lip and he should be as good as new.”
Lisa peered over his shoulder at Mac’s mouth. “Eww. That looks like it really hurts. Mac must be in a lot of pain.”
Dr. Baker stopped what he was doing and nodded. “Perhaps it would be best to put some freezing in there.”
When all was said and done, Mac had eight stitches in his lip. Dr. Baker could have passed for a demon any other time, but tonight he was almost human. He had been one of the first people that Mac had checked out when he started seeing the demons in disguise. Mac wasn’t sure if it was more surprise or disappointment that he felt when he saw that Dr. Baker was actually human. He was even more shocked by the side of the doctor that he was seeing tonight.
“Thanks for everything, Doc.”
“No, thank you for helping out Lisa.” Dr. Baker shook Mac’s hand.
“Come to my clinic in a week and I will take those stitches out for you then, Darien.”
