A sixteenth birthday is a time for a lot of fun and a little mischief.
In The Gutter, moderation is non-existent.
In The Gutter, moderation is non-existent.
Sour Sixteen by Morgan Boyd
The day I turned
sixteen, I wanted to get hammered. My mom was out of town with her
piece-of-shit boyfriend, so I had the trailer to myself. I called Jimmy to see
if he wanted to hangout, and get fucked up.
Jimmy was a hippy
who always had weed. Jimmy arrived wearing a tie-dyed Jerry Garcia shirt and
without weed. He said we could scrape his pipe.
That didn’t sound
too fucking good, so I took the ten dollars my mom left me for Burger King and
we walked to the bus stop across the street from Dave’s Liquors.
Early that
morning, before my mom and her worthless dickhead boyfriend got out of bed, I’d
swiped half a pack of Marlboro’s from dickhead’s truck. I didn’t feel bad about
it either because that prick never does anything for me except give me a ration
of shit. I mean, it was my fucking sixteenth birthday and he didn’t even give a
fuck.
Me and Jimmy
smoked at the bus stop while arguing about music.
“Tool kicks the
Grateful Dead’s ass,” I said.
“It’s like apples
and oranges, man. They both have their place.”
Mostly, it was
square ass dick weeds coming and going from Dave’s. They all either looked like
narcs or pussies, so we waited.
It started getting
late, the smokes were getting low, and I was getting super impatient, when I
saw just the right motherfucker: a dirty ass bum with a rotten beard. He pushed
a shopping cart filled with trash across Dave’s parking lot.
“Hey,” I said,
crossing the street.
“I didn’t do
nothin’,” he said, startled.
His eyes swirled
as he clawed at his greasy beard with blackened fingernails.
“Nobody said you
did.”
“What you want?”
“Would you do me a
favor?” I asked, holding out the ten
spot. “Can you buy me a twelve pack of Bud?”
“Can’t leave my
cans,” he said.
“I’ll keep an eye
on them for you.”
He thought about
it for a moment, scratching that dirty beard with his rotten pickles, until he
agreed, but not before he made me promise not to snatch any of his disgusting
aluminum. I swore on my father’s grave I’d keep his garbage safe.
He took the ten
and limped into the liquor store.
Nervously, I
smoked and waited in the parking lot. It felt like an eternity. What the fuck
was he doing in there? How god damn hard was it to buy some fucking beer?
Through the large
glass windows, I watched the troll wander the aisles, talking to himself, until
he finally grabbed a twelver.
At the counter, he
tried to pay, but the clerk shook his head and pointed towards the door. They
started arguing.
The bum got hella
pissed, and I almost shit my pants when he shanked the clerk in the neck with a
blade. A geyser of blood spurt from the clerk’s wound as the bum grabbed the
beer and fled.
“Holy fucking
shit,” I said as the bum handed me the bloody pack of Bud. “What’d you do that
for?”
“Self-defense,” he
said just before his head exploded.
The bum toppled
over his shopping cart, spilling his aluminum cans and brains onto the pavement.
The clerk stood in
the doorway, blood squirting from his neck, holding up a big ass .45. He pointed
the piece at me, so I dropped the beer, and raised my hands to the sky.
I thought I was a motherfucking
goner for sure, but the dying clerk sagged to his knees and keeled over onto
his face.
Me and Jimmy hauled
ass back to the trailer park, shitting bricks the entire way. Sirens howled in
the distance like hellhounds.
“Fuck dude,” I
said to Jimmy as I opened the front door. “I really wish you had some fucking weed
right about now.”
“I wish you hadn’t
ditched the beer,” Jimmy said. “Your fingerprints are all over that twelve
pack.”
“Fuck,” I said,
and turned on the light.
“Surprise,” my mom and her worthless dickhead
boyfriend yelled from the living room. They held a store-bought cake. “Happy Birthday.”
