“Mess with one of us, mess with the
sum of us.” El-Fritz solemnly recited the family motto, eyes
burning like a rash.
Jean Michael, feeling tough, willfully
failed to understand. “How many? Some of you?” He had only
just finished beheading his old tormentor Fellvis, tricked and
trapped and topped-off like a tree-service, and was quite pleased
with himself.
“All!” said El-Fritz, losing his
temper at last. “Each added up with the other making a King mob
you wouldn't believe. Allvis!” Their numbers were indeed growing,
massing behind him.
That warm glow of satisfaction Jean
Michael had felt at long-plotted vengeance, complicated and cruel,
quickly drained out like the badly-insulated set of storm windows he
was. Tipsy Ale-vis threw the first punch, connecting with a crunch
of broken nose, and the kicking began in earnest as soon as Jean
Michael staggered to his knees. A. F. L. - V. I. S. used bats and
hard hats. El-Fritz blew him a kiss and emptied a garbage can.
Stealthvis stomped him in secret and immediately crept back into the
shadows, the world must never know!
Time collapsed along with Jean
Michael's lungs, and he was as a vibrating string on a viola, at one
fixed end atop his father's shoulders passionately rooting on the
local eleven, at the other, brought nearer or more far according to
fluctuations of tuning peg between the fickle fingers of that Soloist
Outside of Space and Interval, a pensioner patiently awaiting the waves
of black. Seeing himself from the inside that tube so easily
mistaken as a view from above (as he too interpreted it, as a matter
of fact), Jean Michael felt at peace and fulfilled and delicately
perfected. But his body, denied such an elevated (or rather,
esoterically terrestrial) perspective, thrashed and fought for
everything.
“This is Dullvis!” said Ür-vis
after a while, being the Bronson of the bunch, and, looking for a
more prototypical punch-up, one with even odds, propelled himself
into the crowd, swinging willy-nilly. Though Teutonic team-leader
El-Fritz tried like heck to reign in the gang, they were a crazed,
volcanic Vesuvius of Aaron Presley, and followed Ür
right on in.
After not too long a pause the authorities
intervened, satisfied that enough blood had been spilled for one day
to in the future encourage restraint on both sides. They rounded up
the gang with Armadillo Hoops and led them away to be tried as
adults.
LL-vis arrived after the dust had
cleared, the crowd dispersed, the sirens receding like hairlines.
His schedule was tightly booked between one romantic tryst and the
next, and this was the best he could possibly do, to deliver a
tentative boot to the ribs. He paused, tried again. Jean Michael
was long past feeling it.
“Where the Hellvis have you been,
LL?” said Fellvis, overlooked in the outpouring of law-and-order
that had swept up his brothers. Decapitated, he remained fully
capable of nagging a ne’er-do-well.
“Me?” said L.L., smoothest of the
King mob by far. “I've been here for years!”
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