Radiation Face by Phil Skaggs Jr.
I look at the clock by the tv and I still have half an hour before I have to be there, but i figure I should leave early in case I have a hard time finding it. I run back upstairs and grab her address and double check the computer to make sure she lives where I think she lives. She does.
I grab my lunch and bag and head downstairs again and then out the door.
It’s really nice out. There’s a soft breeze coming in over my few wisps of hair. I have my hoodie on and some sweatpants and a t-shirt. I have my gloves in my bag. I hadn’t taken them out since the tryout. I remember what Sam said and I start to run.
It doesn’t take any time to get to Sam’s. It’s a nice looking place. A big white house with a red front door and a nice car parked out front. There’s a front gate. It barely comes up to my waist. I start to unlatch the gate, but I stop myself and start heading down the sidewalk again. I’ll circle around slowly to kill some time. I don’t want to be that guy.
I round the block once. It’s a short block so I decide to do it again. I get around the corner and police car pulls up beside me and flashes its lights. I stop and turn to it. I recognize the cops. Same as before.
‘Whatcha doing?’ The driver asks.
‘Just walking around the block.’ I answer.
The cop looks at his partner and says something to him before he turns back to me and says, ‘Why?’
‘I’m just killing time. I was headed over to a friend’s.’
‘Kinda early on a Saturday, ain’t it?’ He says.
‘Yeah. I guess so. She wanted to get started early.’
‘She?’ He looks back at his partner again. His partner grabs the radio and starts talking into it. ‘Who’re you going to see, again?’
‘A friend of mine.’
‘What’s this friend’s name?’
‘Sam. Samantha.’ I’m wondering how much time I’ve burned.
‘Samantha what?’
I sit there stunned for moment. I don’t remember her last name. Or if I ever learned it. ‘Uh, I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know...’
I shrug.
‘Which house are you headed to?’
‘I’ve got the address. Here.’ I walk over and hand it to him. He takes it and reads it then shows his partner. They smile at each other and the partner gets back on the radio and talks into it one more time.
‘Alright, that checks out.’ He smiles and nods as he hands back the address to me. ‘It’s that way, by the way.’ He points behind me as he drives off.
‘Yeah, I know I was just killing so-’ The car is already down the street and turning the corner before I get it all out.
I turn back around and head to Sam’s house.
I walk through the gate and raise up my hand to knock on the door. Suddenly, I realize that Sam probably has parents. But I’m knocking before I can think of what to do next. The idea of meeting them makes me want to drop everything and run back home. If they’re anything like the other parents I met when I first moved here, they are going to hate me.
The door opens and Sam is standing there in a baggy blue tracksuit. ‘Did you have trouble finding the place?’ She asks.
‘No.’
She nods me in. ‘Oh, cause I saw you pass the house a few times.’
‘Oh well, I just got here a little early. Walked the block to kill some time.’
‘Oh, okay. Did you run here?’
‘Yeah.’
‘If you feel like killing time next time then run the block. You need to get conditioned.’
‘Alright.’ I say.
She walks in front of me and doesn’t give me the house tour or anything. She points out where the bathroom is and where the door to the basement is. That’s where the weights are. ‘We’re not going to go down there until after lunch.’
She leads through the living room and to the large sliding glass door in the back of the kitchen. I smell bacon cooking and hear something frying in another pan. A large figure in shorts and a tank top is standing with its back to us as it cooks over the stove.
‘Hey, Dad. I’m going to be outside.’ Sam says.
The large figure slowly turns around and I know who it is before I see is whole face. It’s Willy Barnes. The fighter from the other night. His tongue is hanging partially out. It’s pulled back into his mouth as starts to talk. ‘So he’s the guy, huh?’
I look over at Sam. She’s nodding her head. My mouth is hanging open. I look back at Willy Barnes and nod as well. Not sure if that’s the right thing to do or not.
‘What’s your name, kid?’
‘Abe Jennings.’
‘Alright, Abe. You listen up. I’m not too keen on my daughter training anyone, but she’s talked me into it.’ He set his hand on his hip and leaned against the counter. ‘Now, I’m going to be here all day. You try anything. You get pissed at her. Whatever. I’m going to be out there to beat your ass. All right?’
All I can do it nod.
‘Good.’ He smiles.
I can feel Sam’s body get tense as she lets out a fast ‘Dad!’ through her teeth.
‘Sorry, Sam. You guys go do what you need to do. I’m going to get back to my eggs and bacon.’ He waves us off.
Sam shakes her head. ‘Sorry about that. He’s just being an idiot.’
‘That’s Willy Barnes!’ I say as if I’d followed the man his entire career.
‘Yeah. I know.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me your dad was Willy Barnes?’
‘You didn’t ask and I didn’t think it was important.’
‘Not important? I’ve seen the guy fight. He’s awesome!’
‘Yeah, I know, but you’re not training with him. You’re training with me.’
‘I know. I’m just saying that he’s good. I would have been more inclined to say yes the first time if I had known you knew an actual fighter.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind the next time I’m recruiting.’ She crosses her arms and a serious look covers her face. ‘Now, pick up that jump rope by the chair and start jumping.’
I pick it up without thinking and start to leisurely jump. ‘So did you learn that move from him?’
‘Yep. Learned a lot of things from him. If you don’t speed it up, I’m going to show you one of them.’
The rope starts to buzz around my ear. ‘So why don’t you fight?’
‘If you hadn’t noticed girls don’t fight over at the Bishop.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘Huh, at Middling we had girl fighters.’
‘This isn’t Middling. You’re slowing down.’
‘How many am I supposed to do?’ I ask.
‘Until I say to stop. You’re slowing down again.’
‘How fast am I supposed to go?’
‘Too fast to talk.’
I pick up the pace and start to feel my muscles going from a slight soreness to a burning that is flowing through my arms. As I jump, trying to keep pace with Sam’s directions, I take quick looks over at her. She’s got on her dark make up over her smooth face. Her hair’s pulled back in a ponytail. She looks nothing like her dad. She looks nothing like me. She looks nothing like any radiation baby I’ve seen. I’ve heard of normal looking people getting out of the zone and having normal looking babies before. I’ve never heard of a mutant getting out and having a normal looking kid.
I keep jumping. Sam is pushing me to go. My lungs are working over time. Sweat is streaming down my face and my body feels ready to stop everything. But I keep going. I keep going and I keep looking at her. All that excitement has burned away and now all I can see is this anomaly standing in front of me. This freak. This fucking lucky shit. Born to a mutant and untouched by any of this shit I have to go through. I keep going and I keep pushing until she tells me to stop and then start on the next thing. I keep going. Doing more and more.
A mutant gets out of the zone and does well. Has a daughter and she’s perfect. Completely normal. I th
I just listen to her for the rest of the morning. I don’t stop until it’s lunch then I sit in the chair and my body wants to stay there. I don’t know what to do or what to say. I want to keep working. I want to keep working and get my mind off of this.
How come we didn’t know? How come no one told us that we could leave and have normal kids? How come no one told us others were making it? I sat in the zone for sixteen years until my parents dragged me out to this place. This place filled with assholes and more assholes. And some mutant was living in the same damn neighborhood I was being shit on by the cops? How come no one ever told me of this?
#
We take a break for lunch. I dig out my sandwich and fruit and Sam grabs me a glass of water from the kitchen. We eat outside. My heart starts to slow down and my head starts to speed back up.
‘So, Wally is your dad?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. I think we’ve established that.’
‘I just want to make sure... He’s not like an uncle or anything?’
‘Nope. Why are you being so weird about this?’
‘It’s just that I-’ I take a bite of my sandwich. ‘That you-’
‘Look nothing alike?’
‘It’s just that I’ve never seen that. He’s a mutant. You’re not.’
‘He’s not a mutant.’
‘Well, he is and he isn’t? The flyer for the Bishop said he was and look at him. He’s a mutant.’
‘He’s not.’ She sets down her sandwich. ‘He used to live down in the zone before I was born, but got of there. He wasn’t affected by all the radiation like some people were, but he couldn’t get a job out here so he worked on the line cleaning up crap from the zone, you know?’
‘Yeah, my dad does that kind of thing. He like supervises or something.’
‘Yeah, my dad dug and all that crap they hire mutants to do, now. And well, he started getting sick and started looking like that. Eventually, he wasn’t any different from all those guys born in the zone.’ She shrugs.
‘He got it just working there?’
‘Yeah, it’s not really happened before. They don’t know what it is. He got some workers comp and sold off his body to science after he dies. And now we just live off that and whatever he wins from fights.’
‘Shit. I didn’t think that could happen. I thought you had to be born with a face like this.’ I motion to myself.
‘Apparently not. No offense.’
‘I know what I look like.’
‘Yeah, I guess you would.’ She laughs.
‘So what about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘Were you born after that happened to him or what?’
‘I was born before. He got sick when I was two. Mom left a little after that and it’s been me and him since.’
‘Wow. Okay.’
‘You alright there, dude?’
‘Sorry. It’s just a lot to take in. I never thought this could happen. My parents were born normal. They moved out here so they could have a normal looking kid and all cause everyone says it’s the radiation before you’re born that does you in.’
‘Well, I guess that’s not true.’
‘Yeah, I guess not.’
‘It’s nice to know I’m not the only mutant in town.’
‘Nope. You’re not.’ She points back towards downtown. ‘There’s also community out in downtown that have been making their way in from time to time.’
‘I saw a lot at the fight. I thought they somehow hoofed it up here or something.’
‘Nope, they live in the city. They come up here and get crap jobs.’
‘Weird. I never knew anyone who left. I had heard things, but the radiation pretty much blocked all communication in the place. We got everything through the paper, but that didn’t show up every day. Or every week.’ I shake my head. ‘It’s just a amazing to realize that.’
‘Well, you got out.’
‘Yeah, I did. But I’m with my parents. I’d known a few freaks to be taken out with their normal looking parents, but no one ever just got up and left when they turned eighteen or something. It just didn’t happen.’
‘Sounds rough.’
‘Yeh, well, it wasn’t so bad. Just a way of life we had. Little school. No electronics. Lots of time to kill.’
‘Sounds like the perfect recipe for fighting.’
‘Exactly.’
Sam looks at her watch and says, ‘Alright. I want to get through some stuff in the next few hours. I’m going to have you show me your fundamentals. Then you hit the weights.’
‘Alright.’ I shove the rest of the sandwich in my mouth and dig through my bag for some gloves. I grab them, and Sam has me follow her back into her house and down the stairs. Willy Barnes is sitting on the couch watching tv.
We get downstairs and there are weights and a mat and heavy bag and a speed bag.
‘Alright. I want to see you hit the bag.’
‘The heavy?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Pick one. Come on.’
‘Alright.’ I walk over to the heavy bag and start swinging. I try to show her everything I have and get as many punches as I can within the first few seconds.
She stops me. ‘Whoa, what are you doing?’
‘Hitting the bag.’
‘Looks like you’re wasting energy to me. You need a little more control when you swing. And you’ll get the power and speed you want. Here, let me show you.’ She puts her fists up in the air and slowly walks me through the steps to throw a jab. Where I should be when I start and where I should be when I finish and where I should be when I want to follow through with another punch.
I place my hands behind my back and pay close attention as she shows me each step. Then it’s my turn and I start to swing at the bag, but she slows me down. Slows me down to a snail’s pace as I learn to place each punch exactly where I should. Exactly how I should. This goes on for hours and by the time I’m ready to swing at full speed, she switches me to weights. And I follow along with everything she tells me to do.
#
I woke up Sunday and did pretty much the same thing again with Melanie. This time she switched up the exercises. I concentrated mostly on my technique. It was a nice pace. I left the session with my body still sore but not as bad as I would have imagined it being. It was going well. I was happy.
Mom and Dad were excited that they had found the perfect color for the baby’s room. They spent all Sunday working on it. I even helped out a little when I got home from practice. Dad was in such a good mood that he didn’t even bother me once about a job or meeting my trainer. We had a nice family dinner and my parents talked about all the things we’d do when the kid showed up.
Dad bitched a little about his work, but it was all smoothing over it seemed. He didn’t go into it too much but he seemed happy, too. All in all, it was pretty good day. But that was Sunday.
On Monday, I’m sitting on the roof. Watching some monsters fight in my old hometown.
My phone buzzes and it’s Melanie again. I can’t believe she’s sent me three texts. She must really be desperate for some company. I ignore them and keep watching the horizon with Sam and the other kids. I’ve never been up here for a fight. Never felt I needed to. I’d seen just about everything down there in the zone. Middling was never hit too bad, but you were close enough you could see gunk between those monsters’ toes.
The buildings shake and the sound is nearly deafening. A group of guys cheer on as a large figure raises his claw and slashes across the other. It is too hard to make out which monsters they are. Someone has the radio tuned to the play-by-play, but I don’t listen to it. I didn’t need to know the details of what is happening over there.
‘It’s something, isn’t it?’ Sam asks.
‘Yeah.’ I’m watching the crowd cheering over the announcer’s voice as I see that familiar glow in the distance. One of the monsters is getting ready to unleash some radiation.
‘I’ve always wanted to get close up to see them. Really see what they can do. I’ve only ever seen them here or online, but it’s never any good footage.’
‘Yeah, cameras don’t work too well in the zone.’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s nothing special, you know. Seeing them and everything.’ She looks at me, waiting for me to continue. ‘They’re just mounds of dark green scales and muscles.’
‘Yeah, up close. But have you ever seen them fighting? I mean like really fighting?’
I think for a minute. I’ve seen them thousands of times. I know a lot of them by name. But they’ve only ever been this surreal natural occurrence. They leave so much destruction in their wake, but all you see when you’re at the foot of the monster is a foot. And you look up to make out what’s going on, but it’s just this tower that runs up into the radiation fogs surrounding them. They’re just a these creatures. Both real and unreal. Nothing but devastation, but without any true form. They appear suddenly and disappear down into the surrounding earth just as suddenly. As unpredictable as the weather.
Finally I answer, ‘No.’
‘See that’s what you’re missing.’ Sam says. ‘I bet it’s spectacular. I bet it’s beyond anything we can imagine.’
‘Yeah, probably.’
We watch the eerie blue light pulse from the zone. It creates this ripple sensation as it spreads this way and a few seconds later we hear the noise that comes with it. It’s like white noise. A bad radio station played through a babbling brook. Louder than anything. Then it dies down and light has faded away. The creatures disappear in the surrounding areas. Back to wherever it is they go.
‘You know I met your dad before. At the fight.’ I tell Sam as the noise vanishes.
‘Yeah, I know. I was waiting and saw you go up to him. He told me all about it. That’s how I knew you needed a coach. You know, besides how bad you were.’
‘Oh thanks. Why didn’t he say something when I met him last time. He acted like he didn’t remember me.’
‘Don’t feel too bad. He has a really shitty memory when it comes to people. He remembered what you said. So, I mean, that’s pretty good.’
‘Oh, I see. Is he punch drunk or something?’
‘No. Not at all. He just didn’t remember what you looked like or anything. Why’
I slump my shoulders and look down at my hands. ‘I was just wondering what was going on.’ The other students and the teachers on the roof were starting to leave and head back to class. Sam and I get up and wait for the crowd to die down before we join them to head to the exit sign.