Skeleton Wars: Part 0 - The Awakening
"if your grave doesnt say "rest in peace" on it you are automatically drafted into the skeleton war" - tweeted by @dril
New Years Eve. 1969. For Donald McCallister Frederick, who preferably goes by Donny, it was the beginning of a rebirth. Not just for himself or his friends, but for everyone on Earth. The beginning of a new era that will be ushered in with the coming decade. A celebration of fire. An awakening from the ash. But in order to get to all that, he had to run away again. For good, this time.
"Donald, come downstairs! Your mother's made dinner! Come on down, son!"
Donny stared up at the most beautiful thing this Earth had to offer. A little thing that he liked to call, The Wall of Legends. And in all its grace and wonder, it was. It was a collage of posters of only the greatest bands and artists ever to live or die. Yesterday, Colin let him have his brother's Grateful Dead 1968 tour poster and it was the last piece in the puzzle. He had officially covered the entire wall with the ultimate shrine to rock and soul. Every square inch of wall was covered and layered over after years of work and hundreds of paychecks spent on the greatest project of his lifetime.
"Donald! Dinner!"
"I HEARD YOU!"
He couldn't even relax for a minute without having someone yell at him. Let alone, Richard. Never really understood what she sees in the guy.
"Donny, sweetie! Hurry before it gets cold!"
He loves her. More than anything. And he really couldn't stay mad at her forever. It was time for her to move on and she just happened to meet Richard at the right place and the right time. And he's happy for her. That's all he could say. That's all he would say, that is, if he ever saw his mother again.
Donny felt under his pillow for a the envelope. Got it. Ripped it open and dumped its contents on the bed. There it was. A form that all boys his age got at one point or another. He'd kept it secret from the both of them ever since it came in this morning. If he ever told them, he'd have to listen to his own mother and her glorified boyfriend explain why sending him to die for his country's politicians was for the best. The one thing he couldn't bear to listen to was "father knows best".
"Dammit, son, listen to your mother! If your ass isn't down here in ten seconds!"
Donny got his things and stuffed them in his backpack. He stuffed the draft card in his pocket and undid the latch on the window, readying to step out. That's when he heard it. Footsteps coming up the stairs already. Heavy. They were distant still, but his room was the first by the stairs. He was running out of time.
The latch clicked open. The backpack was thrown out first. It landed light, just as it was packed.
"Oh no. You're not getting out of this again."
The old man quickly shuffled his weight, clearing away clothes and beer cans as he made his way across the room, but he was too late. By the time he got to the window, he was looking down at the ground. The small figure of his step-son appeared and disappeared again under the yellow of the street light.
Donny rounded the corner to his old friend's house. He hadn't really hung out with him since they were kids, but he was the only one in his neighborhood he could trust. He knocked quickly and almost immediately, the kid opened the door.
"Hey, do you have it?", Donny impatiently blurted.
"Yeah, Don, sure." He pulled out Donny's bike and handed it over and stuttered, "I...um…"
"Everything good, Colin?", Donny inquired, looking down at the bike.
"Why...um...- do you need your bike this late at night again?"
Donny already began wheeling the bike down to the pavement. Halfway down, he replies over his shoulder, "Thanks, man!", and bikes away down the street.
Two girls and a guy hang around a makeshift campfire in a cleared up area of the woods just off the main road. The guy, relaxing casually on his side, picks at the fire with an unusually long and skinny branch that he found. The two girls sit opposite the guy near the roadside, one sitting on top of and the other leaning against an unusually large rock. The girl leaning against the rock slouches closer to the ground, staring blankly at the stars, stoned out of her mind. While the one sitting on top, still working on her own high, decides to break the silence after watching her friend from across the fire for the past twenty minutes.
"Arney, what are you doing?", the top-sitting girl says between her smoke cloud.
"Hm? Never seen a stick, Jessica?"
The stargazing girl sits up to see what the commotion's about.
"What's Arney doing?", she asks.
"I don't know, he's doing something with a stick or something."
"Arney, what are you doing with that stick?"
"Same thing you're doing with your life, Jess." He takes the stick out and starts waving it in the air. It has a small fork-like notch at the end. He points it down toward the girls.
"Here. Pass the joint." He starts waving the stick at them. "Jeeeeeess. Give sticky the joint. Sticky needs a hit."
The stargazing girl and Jess start cracking up. "Jesus, Arney. Stop calling it sticky, that's so creepy."
Arney gives Sticky a voice-cracking high pitched voice, "Aw, Sticky sad. Sticky saaaad, Jess! Why high school drop out so mean to Sticky? Why, Jess?"
"Hey!", a voice yells from the woods.
The man himself comes out from the brush, lighting up Arney's face. He jumps to his feet and comes running up with Sticky. "Donny boy!"
Before Arney could go in for the hug, Donny turns away without noticing, walking toward the rock side of the campfire to throw his backpack down. Laying down, he's greeted by the other girl as she crawls over, snuggling up with him.
"Did you bring it, sweetie?", Etta said to him.
"We've been waiting up for you, Donny boy. We already burnt ours. You gotta finish the ceremony."
"Why don't you give Don your Sticky? Maybe he can do it?", Jess remarks.
"I know that was sarcasm, Jess, but since you brought it up, I will consider it."
After the bickering continued for a while, and Donny brushed his girlfriend off him, he got up to address the crowd.
"Okay um… I have an announcement," he said, stood up on a nearby log, "I know I'm not normally one to make announcements… but… y'know... I thought I'd make one tonight."
His friend gathered around and sat in a semi-half-circle around him. Donny stood up on the rock.
Arney shoots up from his criss-cross leg-pretzel and sits back to his original spot on the non-rock side of the fire. "Oh my god, he's gonna speak. Guys. GUYS. Donny boy's gonna speak."
Etta and Jess follow to sit with Arney as attentive audience members. Criss-cross applesauce. Donny takes a breath.
"Etta-"
She immediately bursts into a fit of laughter. Cusps her hand trying effortlessly to stifle it. Her attempts fail and she digs her head down and away from him.
"Arney… Jess…"
Donny looks around for some reason. He takes out the card, holding it up like a demon to cast back to hell. It flapped around helplessly as the wind picked up, and blew some embers to him. Like it was breathing. Pulling him in. It shouldn't be this hard. What's stopping him?
He can hear Arney's voice pestering him from a distance. He could feel them waiting for him to do something. He knew he had to. But he had no other choice.
Two of the town's ranked seventh and ninth best officers on the force, in the county's only ten-man police force, sat waiting in their car. Officer Bryday sat, turning the scanner dial slowly, deliberately, clicking along channels of garbled static after static, looking for something interesting to get his hands on.
Officer Dunnstock, a much younger recruit on the force, startled himself into consciousness out of a dream, spilling cold coffee on his lap. After a quick look around at his surroundings proving his return to the real world, he turned to Bryday while cleaning his lap and scoffed at the old man.
"Oh god, what are you doing now?"
"Looking for a call, rook. Any minute now. You can't rush these things, you just gotta be patient with her is all. Looking for any hoodlum bis'nis out there because you know there's always something they're getting themselves up to these days."
"What do you mean hoodlum business, you old goon? What about the missing person report? The man from Bloomington saying his kid ran away, what about that?"
"Yeah...well…" He fidgeted in seat a bit and checked the status on whether the car was on. To his surprise, the keys turn over and the engine started. "With these things, we got better chance finding them shown up in the gutter someplace, know what I'm saying?"
Bryday's insane cackling quickly turns to a fit of coughing. After he clears his throat, they take off.
Donny took one last, long look at it. In all its dramatic fashion, he stood up. Facing against the gusts of wind. Pushing against him like it was forewarning, keeping him from being able to throw it in.
"Jess?", he says, after a prolonged silence, "Lemme see that stick again."
"HA! TOLD YOU!"
"Shut up, Arney, just bring him the stick."
"I'm sorry, what?"
She sighs. "...I'm not gonna say it."
"Sorry, what? No, I honestly don't know what you're talking about, I just need some more clarification."
"Arney, I can't throw it into the fire. Wind's too strong. I need that stick", Donny adds.
"Okay! Okay! Fine! Let me see where I put him."
As Arney continues to play along, pretending to look for Sticky to the amusement of nobody, he begins to realize the stick isn't actually there and begins to look for it for real.
"Arney, hurry up! The fire's going out!" Jess yells.
"Okay, there's a lot of sticks here, alright?"
"Then just pick one!"
Arney starts tossing the inferior sticks behind him into the fire like dirt he's digging out of a hole. The fire crackles as its hunger for fuel is being fed, and sends sparks and sharp plumes of smokes up into the sky.
"FOUND IT!", Etta squeaks.
She holds up Sticky, the one and only, in all its glory, and hands it to Donny.
"You got this, cupcake."
Donny takes the draft card and impales it kabob-style. Without further hesitation, he tosses it in with the rest of the firewood, a new cloud of smoke billowing up. He watched the glowing red holes eat their way through, disintegrating the words out of existence.
"Woo! Yeah, stick it to the man!", Arney yells. "That's my boy!"
Arney starts to clap and the rest join in with him. Donny watches the fire, almost hypnotized by its beauty, with all his friends gathered at his side. And, for the first time in years, he smiles.
"Ma'am, we're asking if you've seen a sixteen year-old boy. He lives on the street next to yours, we're seeing if you know anything you could tell us."
"Sonny, I told both of y'all before and I'm gonna say it again just 'cause I'm nice. I ain't seen shit. I went to bed, woke up to answer the door and here I am, answering it. That's it. End of story. Good night."
"One of your neighbors said they saw him come up to this house and leave with a bike, is this true?"
The old woman coughed out her half-burnt cigarette and turned to Bryday for his take as a fellow old person before she could take any more of this yuppie cop.
"Aren't you gonna say something, old timer?"
Bryday, who had been standing there at the door with them, looked bewildered at her like she wasn't supposed to be able to see him with his invisibility cloak on. He let out a cough trying to talk, and cleared his throat three or four times before finally getting a word out.
"I… um… Th-thank you for your time, miss."
To the speechless surprise of both the old lady and his partner, Bryday tips his cap, turns around, and walks back toward the car. A reluctant Dunnstock follows.
"Hey. Hey! Wait a second!"
Dunnstock throws himself into the passenger seat and slams shut the door. Bryday stares off wide-eyed, shaken.
"Bryday, what the hell? What's the matter with you? We have to go back there."
Looking out, without turning his head or moving a bone in his body, Bryday squeaks out a single word, an almost half-whisper:
"Hoodlums..."
Dunnstock looks toward his partner's line of sight at the outskirts of the neighborhood as it leads towards the forest. A plume of smoke rises up from the midsts.
"Okay so someone's making s'mores for New Year's, so what?", Dunnstock remarks.
"In the middle of the worst dry season in our county's history?"
"...Shit."
Bryday and Dunnstock speed off, sirens blaring down the forest highway.
"I know I haven't been the most open person as of late…", Donny continues his speech to his loyal disciples.
"But I just wanna thank you guys for sticking with me all this time, and allowing me to find myself outside of my toxic family. Who I truly am."
Jess gets up in the middle of him talking and leaves to go back to the van.
"But this time, my friends, I can face the music..."
"Hell yeah!", Etta interjects.
"...I'm running away from my parents house for good this time…"
"That's my boy!" Arney sings.
"...As soon as I go back to get my record collection."
The excitement around the campfire stopped dead in its tracks. His two-member audience were taken aback at the abruptness of it all. Arney was the first to speak. He spoke softly with genuine concern.
"You're going back?"
Jess's voice chimes in from the distance, "Guys?"
"I'm sorry, Arney. I have to. I hate my parents as much as you do, believe me."
From the distance again: "Hey, guys?"
"You're gonna risk everything we did for you getting out here just for some dumb records?", Arney boomed.
"Arney, please. Someone could hear us.", Donny warned, now faced with his friend standing eye-to-eye.
"Someone could HEAR US?! Are you shitting me? You're gonna go back there to save your stupid vanity collection and you're telling me to CALM DOWN?"
"I didn't tell you to calm down, Arney. I said please… but yes."
"GUYS!", Etta yelled.
Donny and Arney turned to her pointing toward the highway. They turned again to follow her line of sight and saw nothing.
"What, Etta?", Arney asked dumbly.
"The van!"
Him and Donny turned again to see where she was pointing at and saw nothing. No van, no Jess. All three of them ran up the hill where it leveled off on the shoulder. Looking both ways, they spotted the van parked down the road some on their right and quickly followed. As they approached, they spotted her. Standing next to the van in the open. Donny didn't notice what she was shaking her head for until it was too late. Two cops came from the brush and stopped them in their tracks. The older one stood between them and Jess, with the younger one awkwardly standing behind. The old cop swung a bag of weed in his hand like he was fanning out a Polaroid, watching the clumps tumble around inside with a grin on his face.
"Well, well, well. Having a little fun this New Year's, aren't we?"
He stuffed the bag in his pocket for safekeeping and turned to face Jess.
"These the friends?"
Jess barely turned her head up to make eye contact with them. She just started tearing up. The old cop turned back around with a sly smile.
"Gonna take that as a yes. Anyway, what's gonna happen here is this: my partner over there's gonna put you in cuffs," He gestures over to him, "Say hi, Barney." Barney waves, "Anywho, once Barney puts you in y'all's cuffs, I'm gonna put each and every one of you in the county jail where you can think about what you did."
The old cop looks on with a professional stern glare that he struggles to disguise his childlike glee behind. Donny looks back at Jess and meets eyes as her head comes up from tears. She winks. Hangs her head back down again.
"Now here's the bad news: at the moment we don't have enough handcuffs for all of ya, so you're gonna have to share. Or, better yet, all y'all hoodlums and bumheads go on in your hippie dippy van of yours and I take y'all down to the station in style and we can all watch the countdown to midnight like old pals. Sound good?"
His partner whistles sharply from his side of the pack and gestures the old cop over. The old cop looks around a minute and lets out a courtesy reminder to stay put, then half-runs over. Barney gets him close and whispers something to him about "protocol" and "miranda" before Barney sees the kids all listening in and brings the old man a little further away for a private chat. Donny turns back forward at Jess who's already gotten inside the van.
"Etta!", he whispers, pulling on her arm. She sees Jess in the van and gets his drift. Etta pulls Arney with her, and they tip-toe along. Barney looks back at the group and does a double-take.
"HEY!"
The three friends run back into the van and shut the door in Barney's face. The old cop at this point was already starting the car. Jess turned the key over, ready to floor it when Donny intervenes.
"Wait! Jess! I need to drive. I drive all the time, I can get us out of here."
"But I drove here!"
"Just- There's no time! Please! Let me!"
Donny slightly nudges her off and takes the wheel for himself. He presses slowly on the pedal, gradually gaining speed down the highway. Faster. Faster.
Barney and the old man follow closely behind, trying to pass them, but keep getting cut off from oncoming traffic. In the van, Jess holds the sides of the rumbling machine as she makes her way to the seats in the back with her friends. She watches Arney and Etta struggle to hold onto anything they could, while looking forward at the winding road from a safe distance.
As Donny continued to swerve around the hilly up and down curves of the forest highway, and the pursuit fiercely continued, the trees around them began to appear more and more sparse, eventually leading them scaling a mountain cliff-side highway.
"Donny! Please! It's over!", He heard Etta cry.
It was all noise to him. He loved her, but he couldn't give those cops the satisfaction. He pressed down on the acceleration. The idea was that instead of slowing down on the turns, which was letting those cops gain up on them, he went faster. Do the opposite. Catch them off-guard. Let them swerve. Watch them spin out. That was the idea.
The van swung around a corner, turning with even greater speed than before. Doing this a couple of times with no problem, Donny got confident. On the third time, the van gave way to physics. It quickly overturned and the back end slung over the dividing line, skidding inches from the railing. Donny turned the steering wheel quick the other way, then the other way, eventually correcting itself on the straightened road.
"Jesus Christ Donny, you're gonna kill us!" Arney yelled, trying to get through to him.
But it was pointless. Donny had already made up his mind. The minute he stepped out that bedroom window. The two cops in their car creeped up in the side view mirror, accelerating past the driver's side window, and came up ahead of the van on the wrong side of the road. The younger cop said something over the megaphone that Donny honestly couldn't hear. The road curved, and the headlights of a car from the oncoming traffic came up fast. It all happened in a blur. The cops swerved in front of them, slamming on the brakes and turning desperately, spiralling from all hope of control off the railing, hurtling face-forward down the cliff face.
The van spun slowly around in weightless air, everything flying around like a space shuttle in orbit. Empty cans and cigarette packs and group of terrified, speechless passengers slowly floating toward the roof of the vehicle. A long, drawn out two seconds that abruptly ended the fraction of a second impacting the ground. Shortly after, the van exploded, killing everyone inside.
Donald McAllister Frederick was buried in the Goorman Oaks Cemetery on January 4th, 1970 following a closed-casket ceremony. In attendance were Richard and Mrs. Frederick, close family and friends that came from out of state, and two local officers that, as per the request of the bereaved, are not to be named.
The night of the service, after the deceased had been buried and laid to rest, a heavy rain fell on the graves of Goorman Oaks, wetting the ground into mud. One gravestone affected by the rain in particular read:
Our Darling, Beloved
Son, Brother, Friend
Donald McAllister Frederick
For Eternity, He Rests In Peace
June 17th 1951 - December 31st 1969
With the rain came lightning, and a fierce thunder that roared for miles, through the neighborhood, across the forest campfire, moving throughout the highway ending just at the mountains, before fading completely in silence. As the rain showered clean the fresh gravestone of Donald McAllister Frederick, like someone was washing it of something that wasn't quite there, the text chiseled into the stone somehow washed off with it, erasing it completely, and un-metaphorically, into a blank piece of stone like it had never been engraved. There is no magic, no coincidence at play here. For the legend states that if your grave does not read "Rest In Peace" on it, you are automatically drafted into…
… The Skeleton War.