lied to me. Whether they exist or not, I have no fucking clue. But I’ve met a lot of people who truly believe they are real.”
“They are definitely real,” Franklin says, leaning in closer to Jake’s eyes. “I promise you. They are real. And I am going to kill every last one of those bastards.”
Jake stares at him for a few minutes and snorts. Then he pulls three boxes of bullets out of the VCR.
“In that case,” Jake says. “Let me give you a little piece of advice. Shoot them at close range. You won’t be able to break through their hard candy-coating unless you shoot them at close range or get a more powerful weapon.”
Franklin nods and hands him an envelope. As Jake counts the money, Franklin examines the swords in the glass case and something catches his fancy. It is bright red, almost an apple-red.
He turns to the fat man and asks, “How much for the red cane sword?”
Franklin was named after Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States. Franklin Pierce is known as one of the worst presidents in the history of the country, for doing nothing to stop the rising tension between the North and the South in the days before the Civil War. He just wasn’t a strong leader. He was the wrong person to be in charge of the country at that time in history.
When he was young, Franklin always wondered why his parents named him after the worst president in history, but they wouldn’t tell him why. He studied the president, looked for a good side of him, looking for a reason as to why they would have named him after this particular man. Franklin Pierce was handsome, young, well-spoken, well-liked, and won the presidency in a landslide. He also accomplished quite a bit in the realm of foreign policy. Unfortunately, he just wasn’t up to the task of being president.
After reading more about the president, Franklin started feeling sorry for the guy. Not only is he known as the worst president in history, he also lived a very tragic life. Two of his children died of diseases when they were very young. Then, two months before Pierce went into office, his third and final child was killed in a train accident. Jane Pierce, the president’s wife, blamed her son’s death on her husband’s political ambitions. During her stay in the White House, she went into a state of mental anguish. She spent most of her time locked in a room, all by herself, writing letters to her dead son. While in office, his wife turned on him, his political party turned on him, and even his Vice-President died forty-five days into office and was never replaced. Eventually, Franklin Pierce turned to alcoholism. It is believed that he killed an old woman while driving a carriage drunk one night. It is also believed that he drank himself to death after his wife died of tuberculosis.
Franklin still wonders why his parents named him after this man. He wonders if they did so because Pierce was such a pathetic, tragic figure in history. He wonders if his parents viewed his birth as a tragic event in their lives. Perhaps they didn’t want him, and he ruined all of their hopes and dreams. Or perhaps they just wanted to name him after a president and chose the most handsome one they could find, without bothering to do any research on the man.
With his umbrella tucked under his arm, his red cane (which contains a hidden sword) tapping with his footsteps, petting the inside of one of his pockets, he walks through the wet streets of Old Town to get back home. On the way, he runs into four children playing a game of can hockey in the street. Can hockey is somewhat similar to regular hockey, but instead of a puck they use a crushed beer can, instead of a stick they use their legs, and instead of a goalie box they draw lines in the road with chalk rock. They don’t use skates or helmets. It is a game Franklin used to play with his siblings when he was a kid, before they were brutally murdered.
These kids are Franklin’s neighbors. He sees them playing in the street all the time, at all hours of the day, even at three in the morning. He tries to ignore them as he passes, but they stop playing their game when they see him in his bright red suit and chase after him. Their legs seem to be too short for their bodies, even for children. Franklin has noticed this in the past. It seems that most children around their age tend to have this genetic flaw. Although the news channels have never mentioned it, Franklin believes it has something to with the fetus- enhancing drugs that doctors are persuading pregnant mothers to take these days.
“Let me see it,” one of the short-legged boys shouts at Franklin. The one with the thick-rimmed glasses.
“Not today,” Franklin says.
“Aww, come on,” the little one says.
The little one is the nice one. His name is Jimmy. The brat with the thick-rimmed glasses is named Troy. He doesn’t know what the other two are called.
“Just show it to us, bitch,” Troy says.
Franklin keeps walking.
“Just for a second you pussy bitch,” Troy says. “You want me to call the cops and tell them you tried to touch my dick?”
Troy always threatens to call the cops on Franklin with child molestation charges if he doesn’t do what he wants. Because of this, Franklin often ends up buying the kid expensive toys or renting him R-rated horror movies. He doesn’t know what else to do.
Jimmy tugs on Franklin’s red coat.
“I just want to pet him once,” he says. “Just for a second.”
Franklin lets out a puff of air.
“Fine,” Franklin says. “Just one second.”
He opens up his coat and a small kitten pokes its head out of the inside pocket. Its fur is red, white, and green. Candy-colored.
Jimmy’s eyes light up. As he pokes his finger towards the kitten’s fur, the kitten deflects it with a lick of its scratchy tongue. This cat isn’t actually a kitten. It is a midget cat. It is a fully-grown five-year-old cat that is stuck in the body of a chubby little kitten with plump cheeks, frizzy fur, and scratchy high-pitched meows.
“Her name is Crabcake.”
Jimmy pets Crabcake on the head and she closes her eyes and smiles at him. A kitty smile.
“She’s a cutie!” Jimmy says.
Troy pulls a BB Gun out of his orange Naruto backpack and pumps the handle.
“Hold it there, Jimmy,” Troy says as he pumps the pistol. “I’m going to shoot it out of his hands.”
Franklin hides Crabcake inside of his coat.
“Fucking psycho,” Franklin says to the kid and jogs away from them.
The kid gets angry. “Wait! I didn’t say you could leave!”
Franklin picks up his pace, holding Crabcake firmly inside his pocket.
“Fucking faggot!” Troy yells. “Run away, you faggot!”
Troy shoots his BB gun at Franklin’s back. Even though the BB just bounces off of Franklin’s suit, it still hurts him enough that he lets out a small yelp. Besides Jimmy, all of the kids laugh at him. They chase after him and take turns firing the gun at his back until he gets inside of his apartment building.
Troy is the reason why Franklin hates children.
Franklin lives in a tiny studio apartment in Old Town with two women that hate him: his wife and his wife’s mother. He calls them his wives because it feels like he has two wives whenever they’re both around. His wife, Sarah, looks very old for her age. Her mother, Susan, looks very young for her age. They look almost like twins. He isn’t sleeping with either of them. He tries to distance himself from them. The only thing they want from him is his money, which is never enough to satisfy them.
When he enters the flat, he finds Sarah and Susan having sex with another man. They regularly sleep with other men, but they’re usually a bit more discrete than doing it froggy-style on the rug in the entryway. They also regularly share the same lover, but they usually don’t fuck him at the same time.
Franklin assumes they were hoping that he would walk in on them, so he tries to act as if it doesn’t faze him. He steps over their wriggling legs and crosses the room to his box. Besides the bathroom, his box is the only private area in the studio. It is a homemade cubicle he constructed for himself using sheets of plywood for the walls. He also uses a blanket for a ceiling and door, so that his wives can’t see what he’s up to. To block out the sound, he listens to death metal on his headphones (which he initially only listened to because it was the loudest music he could think of, but he has strangely grown to enjoy it). It is the closest thing he has to a private room. His wives don’t ever bother him while he’s in his box, as long as he promises to never bother them anywhere else in the
