No Fairy Tale

No Fairy Tale

“I told you we would never get away with it, you just wouldn’t listen! No one ever gets away with shit like this, but that didn’t stop you! Nothing ever stops you! You’re seriously fucked up, dude, seriously!”

Johnny just sat there, smiling that goofy little crooked-tooth smile, nodding his head to some imaginary tune. I'm not kidding, he is seriously fucked up!

We’ve been friends our whole lives. I can’t actually remember not knowing him, living just two houses apart in one of those good old, boring suburban neighborhoods. Old Lady Johnson’s dark and dreary garden the only thing that separated us.

Johnny used to love sneaking into the old lady’s garden. Of course the old bat would catch him, she always did. At first she would scream and call him names, grab up her garden rake and chase him back through the hedge. Johnny would run through that hedge quicker than a larcenous rabbit, calling back over his shoulder. “Na-na-na, can’t catch me! Ya looney old bat!” At seven, Johnny was already more than a little over the edge.

I was afraid that he would get caught, maybe the nutty old woman would bake him in her oven like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. Then, he talked me into running as his decoy. I was sure that we would both get caught. I lived in fear most of my childhood. I’m sure my parents didn’t know how much those bedtime stories colored my outlook on life.

It wasn’t like Johnny was sneaking into the old lady’s garden to steal fresh summer produce, the old lady only grew weird flowers and hedges; no watermelon, no fruit trees; just stinky, strange flowers. Then one night, our first year in middle school, Mrs. Johnson’s house burned down.

Not long after the police and fire department finished their investigation, Johnny and I tore out the scorched flowers. We set up a pretty nifty fort amongst the twisted hedges, spending a lot of time hiding out there, smoking cigarettes and reading the gun magazines Johnny snuck out of his house.

Just like his dad, Johnny loved guns, he loved reading about them, he loved looking at the pictures. He would talk about having guns when he got older, lots of guns, he said.

Johnny didn’t like school either, the other kids picked on him, finding his camouflage clothing, weird teeth, funny. He got into a lot of fights, he would tear into someone at the slightest provocation, getting his ass kicked mostly.

On our walk home he would swear that they would pay, someday, they would pay! Then one day, the police came and took his dad away. Johnny wouldn’t talk about why the police took his dad away, but he told me to meet him at the fort after supper, he had something to show me, he said.

When I got to the old fort Johnny was already there, the dark, shiny guns laid out on a blanket. Of course I tried to talk him out of it. “Dude, no one gets away with shit like that!”

“It doesn’t matter.” He said.

Well, the whole thing went about like you would expect. Lots of screaming, lots of blood, like every other time. You’ve read the accounts in the papers, seen the newscasts.

Here we sit; holed up in the library, Johnny smiling his crooked-tooth smile, nodding in time to his own music. I tried to tell him, but he never listens. Then I figured out what to do; when the cops come in, I’m going to shoot us, right between the eyes.