He was a huge man, well over two hundred pounds with a hard athletic build. He had a head full of gray hair that was wild and unwashed. His skin looked like some type of hard wrinkled leather. From the weathered landscape of his face, cold gray eyes stared without emotion, except when they flashed brilliantly with rage. Joey had passed him numerous times in the playground as he sat on the swings. They jokingly called him the Boogieman and made up stories about him kidnapping and punishing bad kids. Joey had noticed the haunted look in some of the other kid’s eyes when he made Boogieman jokes, but he had always laughed it off, thinking they were just little punks scared of a fairytale. Now, he knew that he wouldn’t be making jokes like that again. Now, he knew the stories were real.
Joey finally fainted, just short of finishing his last box. Darrell stepped back, dropping the pistol from the boy’s head to allow the limp body to fall to the concrete floor. He left the door open as he left. When Joey awoke, he’d realize that he’d been only yards away from his own house in his dad’s tool shed. He’d crawl into the house and try to sleep off the whole experience. He wouldn’t tell his dad what happened though. They never tell. They knew they deserved it.
There were no more good parents. The kind who knew when a child needed a trip to the woodshed and a belt or a switch pulled from an old tree lain across his backside ’til the welts ran with blood. The kind who knew how to pinch you until your flesh turned purple for giggling in church during service, while daring you to make another sound.
Nowadays, the child ruled the parent. They threw tantrums when they didn’t get what they wanted and parents gave in just to keep them quiet. Didn’t they know how easily quieted the child was who knew that a scream would immediately bring a slap across the face? Didn’t they know that one day these kids would have to learn that the world did not bend to their wills and may even roll right over them, leaving their broken bodies behind? There were no more good parents to teach these lessons. That’s why they needed Darrell.
It was already getting dark when he left Joey’s back yard. The shadows had locked arms to form battalions of night that laid siege to the entire town. Darrell locked arms with the shadows too. They were his friends, his allies. He moved among them easily. Few people even noticed him as he traveled among his tenebrous troops. He was just another penumbra in an army of darkness.
The couple making love in the Cadillac Escalade parked by the curb didn’t notice him either. Darrell would have likewise paid them no attention if it hadn’t been for the fact that he saw the school books in the backseat of the car as he passed.
“Children,” Darrell hissed in disgust. “Children fornicating in public.”
The disheveled old man drew back a fist wrapped tight in rags and punched it through the back window, just as the boy’s scrawny naked ass rose into the air preparing to impale the eager virgin beneath him with his throbbing young cock. He grabbed the boy by the hair and dragged him out through the passenger side window, in a hail of tempered glass.
When the boy hit the ground and rolled over, his face snarled up into a grimace of rage and confusion, Darrell could see that the kid was barely fourteen years old, not even old enough to be driving, let alone fucking, in his father’s car. The boy wasn’t even wearing a condom.
“You think you’re ready to be a father?” Darrell growled as he snatched the boy up by one arm. The boy swung at him with his free hand, missed, then bent down to pull up his pants and underwear to hide his diminishing erection.
Darrell reached down and grabbed the boy by his genitals, balls and all. The boy let out a helpless squeal.
“I asked you a question, boy.”
“Leave him alone!” The girl had shrugged her clothes back on and was yelling at Darrell through the shattered window.
Darrell let go of the boy’s arm and slapped the girl back into the car. “I’ll deal with you later,” he said turning his attention back to the boy. He tugged on the boy’s penis, stretching it out until it felt like it would tear right out from between his legs.
“Aaaaaaargh! Fuck man, that shit hurts! Let me go motherfucker! What are you her father or something? We were just having a little fun. Jesus, don’t hurt me! Arrgh! Heeeelp!!! Fuck! Let me go!”
Darrell leaned in close until his foul breath, reeking of rotten candy, steamed in the boy’s face. “I should rip it the fuck off and keep it on ice until you’re old enough to know what to do with it!” He reached into the car and dragged the girl out of the car by her hair. He seized her by the throat and held her against the car. “I’m not your father. I care a hell of a lot more than that. So, I’m only going to say this one time. If I ever catch you two going at it again, then I’ll make sure you never have to worry about ruining your lives by catching AIDS or herpes or hepatitis or getting pregnant. I’ll rip your cock right off and I’ll fill your pussy full of super glue and sew it the fuck closed! You are too young! Do you understand me?”
They both nodded with eyes filled with tears. He let them go and they ran off down the street. When they were a block away the boy turned around and yelled, “You crazy motherfucker! I’m calling the cops!”
Maybe he would. Maybe he wouldn’t. Darrell really didn’t care either way. He knew one thing for certain though. That relationship was over. As the boy ran off down the street, Darrell aimed at the center of his back and squeezed off a shot. The boy’s back erupted and bloomed bright red. He pitched forward onto his face, hitting the asphalt with a wet smack. His prone body convulsed for a second and then lay still. He wasn’t dead, but Darrell knew that the bullet had likely shattered his spine. He wouldn’t be getting any young girls pregnant now and definitely wouldn’t be catching AIDS. The horny little bastard wouldn’t be able to feel anything below the waist for the rest of his life. The girl screamed and ran even faster, disappearing around the corner. Darrell chuckled to himself and continued down the street sticking tight to the shadows, just in case the police were already out looking for him.
Darrell walked another four blocks to the big shopping mall on Market Street. He entered the Sears department store and wandered around in a trance. He was thinking about his own children again when he heard the child screaming over in the toy section. Linda and Jake used to scream like that when they wanted something. He’d always given in after they’d embarrassed him, enduring the looks of pity and disgust on the faces of other parents as they watched him struggle with his undisciplined brats. He remembered the look on their faces that asked, “Why doesn’t he give those two little monsters a good spanking?” Back then, he’d felt that corporal punishment was cruel. Now, after seeing how they’d turned out — staying out all hours of the night, drinking, using drugs, getting into fights, having sex at ages thirteen and fourteen, stealing, dropping out of school, one eventually going to prison and the other becoming a crack whore who overdosed on heroin after being used and discarded by half the perverts in town — he realized that not disciplining them more harshly had been the true cruelty. They had never listened to a damn thing he said to dissuade them from their self-destructive behavior and now they were lost forever.
The sound of that child screeching for his harried mother to buy him a new PlayStation video game brought back all those memories. Darrell stormed over to them fuming mad and dangerously close to exploding.
The screaming, crying, cussing, undisciplined little cur threw a convulsive tantrum while still clinging to its mother’s leg. Darrell was amazed as the little beast balled up its fingers into a fist and punched his mother in the abdomen. The redheaded little terror was barely five years old and already in control of his parent.
“I want it! I want it! I want it!”
“Stop it!” The woman yelled back in a voice that quivered with emotion. She was near the breaking point, teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Her hellacious offspring screeched at her in a shrill whine that raised the hair on Darrell’s neck. The redheaded demon threw itself on the floor and began to kick like an overturned cockroach. This was another one who still believed that the universe should bend to its will and that any frustration to its desires could be easily dispelled with a few well-placed and infinitely irritating screams. Every moment that he went undisciplined was another day in jail, or on drugs, or selling his ass on the streets. He had to be taught.
The entire store seemed to be staring at the little shrieking harpy and its mother with disapproving eyes, awaiting the moment when the obviously overwhelmed woman would actually begin to act like a parent and silence her son’s fit of egocentric rage with some corrective discipline in the form of a slap. It would never happen, not until the child was too old for it to do any good. The moment dragged on and on, the mother withering beneath the child’s aural assault, slowly being conquered, just on the verge of admitting defeat and giving in to her son’s whim.
In a last ditch effort to regain a control that had obviously been abdicated long ago, the mother gave voice to
