Mother Puncher

Mother Puncher

Gina Ranalli

Also by Gina Ranalli

Novels

Chemical Gardens

Wall of Kiss

Suicide Girls in the Afterlife

House of Fallen Trees

Swarm of Flying Eyeballs

Sky Tongues

Praise the Dead

Dark Surge

Peppermint Twist
(forthcoming)

Still Life with Vibrator
(forthcoming)

Collections

13 Thorns
(with Gus Fink)

    
Winner of the Wonderland Award

Published by Afterbirth Books

PO Box 6068

Lynnwood, WA 98036

www.afterbirthbooks.com

Originally published in trade paperback by Afterbirth Books
(2008)

Suicide Girls in the Afterlife

ISBN-10:
1-933929-17-0

Copyright © 2008 by Gina Ranalli. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction.

Cover art and design copyright ©2008 by Ed Riggs

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author or publisher.

all lies and jest...

1

    
He punched her in the face as hard as he could.
    Normally, he wouldn’t have hit any woman so hard, but she’d pissed him off, shooting him in the eyes with that pepper spray. Someone must have smuggled it in for her and the second he’d gotten within arms-length—BAM—he was screaming in pain, blinded and, without thinking about it, he stepped forward and swung.
    It was amazing he’d connected at all.
    But he’d had, clocking her one in the nose and over the din of his own cries, he was pretty sure he’d heard her let out a yelp. He also knew how it felt to break a nose. He’d done it countless times. He knew exactly how it felt when the bones beneath someone’s skin shifted, even just a fraction. His knuckles were super-sensitive to such things, having experienced this nearly ever day since he was fourteen.
    Now, he was forty and though he only punched a few people per day, he’d never lost that magic touch in his knuckles.
    Once his fist connected, he’d stumbled backwards, clawing at his stinging eyes with both meaty fists. “You bitch! I can’t believe you sprayed me!”
    “You broke my fucking nose!” the woman screamed from her hospital bed. “I’m bleeding!”
     “I’m just doing my job lady,” Ed Means told her, still trying to clear his vision. Tears ran down his cheeks, giving him the appearance of a huge, sobbing man. Anyone who didn’t know him would probably think he looked shockingly like that big dude from
Of Mice and Men
. The sensitive retard who was always crying and didn’t know his own strength.
    But Ed knew his own strength alright. Had known it since he was kid in the school yard. Throwing punches was something that came as naturally to him as breathing. He knew from very early on that he would become a boxer and that’s exactly what he did, living out his glory days for nearly twenty years, from 18 to 38 when he’d caught one too many concussions and the federation snapped his license away.
    Ed hadn’t taken it well. Most guys got another ten years in the ring and he remained bitter about having to take a menial job as a Mother Puncher in the local hospital.
    He supposed it was better than doing some other crap work like driving a truck or working as a mechanic, but still. He punched people for a living. For the most part, innocent people, woman who had just given birth to babies. He would have felt more comfortable hitting the fathers, but they more often than not got the hell out of there and let their wives and girlfriends take the heat alone. Little weasels. Ed loved the days when one of them was “brave” enough or “man” enough to stick by his woman’s side and take one in the chin for their mistake, assuming the pregnancy
was
a mistake, which it sometimes was, but not always.
     Sometimes people just took it into their heads that they wanted a brat and no amount of dissuasion was going to talk them out of it.
     Some of them just flat out didn’t care that it was strongly discouraged by the government. Breeding hadn’t been a popular thing to do for nearly three decades now. The world was so overcrowded that the government decided it was time they took control of the situation. They bought up every last insurance company and now
they
were
the
insurance company and they refused to pay for pregnancies. Once a kid was born, the family was pretty much good to go, as long as they could prove they’d had the kid in a hospital. Of course having the brat in a hospital didn’t mean much. Just that the woman and kid were both safe and clean and the delivery went off without a hitch. Usually anyway. Barring complications.
    And once the baby was born…that’s when Ed came in. His job was to clock the mothers a good one, one they wouldn’t forget. Discourage them from doing something so stupid as getting pregnant again. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Sometimes Ed had to punch the same woman twice a year. He would swear, some of them even liked it, looked
forward
to it.
     But today, this woman was most definitely
not
looking forward to it.
    “What kind of a man are you?” she screeched from her bed. “Punching women for a living?”
    Ed ignored her. He’d heard it all before and it had long ago ceased to bruise his masculinity. “You know the rules, lady,” he muttered still rubbing the pepper spray out of his eyes. “You’re the one who got knocked up, not me.”
     “You son-of-a-bitch! If my husband was here…” She trailed off, as if it had just occurred to her that he husband wasn’t here and just where the hell was he? He deserved a punch in the face just as much as
she
did. Hell, probably
more
so since it was
him
who wanted to do the nasty that cold night last January. She hadn’t even
wanted
to do it! “Where the hell is my husband anyway?” she demanded, as if Ed would know. As if he was hiding the weasel away somewhere.
    “Lady, I don’t know. He’s probably hiding in the cafeteria. That’s where they usually go when once the babies pop out. They know I’ll be in here any minute and they take off with their tails between their yellow fucking legs.”
    Big Ed Means spoke the truth. If it was up to him, he’d charge around the whole hospital looking for the little prick who would let his wife take a punch while his hid away in the janitors closet or some shit, waiting for Ed to cruise by, waiting until it was safe to play the loving, supportive husband again.
    Ed hated those guys. He thought there should be a law that the couple can’t leave with the brat until
both
parents got a good sock in the nose for being so stupid as to bring another mouth into this world.
     Of course, that would be pretty hard to do, since sometimes the mother either didn’t know who the father was or the guy was such a loser that he refused responsibility for the kid.
    Yeah, if Ed had his way, those guys would get not one but
two
shots in the face and he wouldn’t go easy on them either.
    One of the reasons the men often hid, however, was that they knew Ed from his boxing days. Knew he had once been a heavyweight contender and had KO’d a lot of famous boxers at one time or another.
    The good old days.
    But they were over now and here he was, his vision blurry but finally returning little by little, and the first thing he was able to see was a pissed-off woman with a bloody face glaring at him and shouting obscenities.
     Ed stumbled his way into the bathroom to rinse his eyes with water. Goddammit. He’d had a lot of stunts pulled on him in the last two years as the Mother Puncher but this was the first time someone had managed to nail him with pepper spray. He sure hoped it would be the last.
     Once he had his eyes rinsed well enough to see without squinting, he returned to the new mother, taking a digital camera out of his jacket pocket. “Okay, lady, smile for the camera.”
    “Are you crazy? I’m calling for security!”
    He fumbled with the camera, trying to put it into focus. “Go ahead and call them,” he said. “They won’t come. This is part of your hospital stay.”
    “Oh yeah? Getting punched by a fucking bully in a suit or having him take a picture of the damage he’s done? Is this one of those sick trophy things? Like what serial killers do?”
    Sighing, he said, “No, it’s for the complimentary photo album the hospital provides. This is the first picture they glue down inside it.”
     Sandy the maternity nurse entered the room then, carrying a squirming bundle of joy wrapped in a blue blanket. “Here you are, Mrs. Obsenity. Here’s your little Jason.” She handed the baby over to the mother, oblivious to the fact that the woman now had a broken nose and was bleeding all over her hospital johnnie.
     “Where’s
big
Jason,” Mrs. Obsenity demanded. “Where the fuck is he?”
    Sandy and Ed exchanged a glance, and then Sandy shrugged.
    “Perfect,” Ed said, trying to change the subject. “I bet you’d much rather have little…uh…Jason in the picture with you, huh? Commemorating this day together?”
    Before the woman could respond, Ed snapped the picture. When it was too late, the woman stopped scowling and gave Ed a big smile. “Cheese.” She held the baby aloft, making sure Ed got him in the picture too.
    Ed sighed and took another pic, though he wasn’t really supposed to; the hospital paid for the camera and wanted it to last. They constantly reminded Ed that the more photos he took, the shorter the camera’s lifespan would be.
    “There you go,” he said. “Congratulations on your new baby boy.”
    This last statement was policy. He was supposed to smile when he delivered the line and if possible, shake the hands of the parents and tap the kid gently on the head.
    Those last things seldom happened, but he always said his line, without fail.
    He turned to exit the room, whispering to Sandy as he passed. “She has a canister of pepper spray. I want to know how she got it in here.”
    “The husband?” Sandy whispered back.
    Ed shook his head. “Well, he’s not around now, but I suppose it’s possible. Did you see him at all?”
    “No.” Sandy glanced warily at the woman with her new son. “Maybe she brought it in herself. You know….
down there
.”
     The thought made Ed cringe. “Whatever. Just be careful. I’m gonna go get a cup of coffee. You know when the next one is due?”
    Sandy consulted her watch. “Probably around four hours. You have plenty of time.”
    “Thank fucking God.” With that he left the room, hoping Sandy would have better luck with the crazy bitch than he had.

2

    
Ed exited the hospital through the back in an attempt to avoid the picketers and Jesus freaks that were a constant staple out front. Some people didn’t take too kindly to the government’s laws these days, still harboring the belief that whoever wanted to have a baby should be allowed to and have the hospital pay for it to boot.
    Ed thought they were selfish scum, knowing the state of the world and still insisting that they should be able to breed as much as they wanted. Losers.
     He climbed inside his truck, a jet-black Ford Trinidad that he kept in mint condition, slammed and locked the door and started the engine. Checking his eyes in the rearview, he saw they were still red-rimmed and puffy. “That bitch,” he huffed under his breath. “Just doing my job.”
     He drove out of the hospital lot and headed home. Normally, he would have just grabbed a cup of coffee from the cafeteria but since he had four hours to kill, he figured he might as well go home and relax for a while. If the baby came sooner, the hospital staff would just call him on his cell and he’d high-tail it back there in no time at all.
    Flipping on the radio, he heard a familiar jingle and then a soothing woman’s voice say, “Envision: It’s a lifestyle.” Then a country tune started and Ed drummed his fingers against the steering wheel in time to the music. He smiled a little in spite of the crummy day he’d had so far.
    Envision was a large and beautiful gated community where no children were allowed and it was also where Ed happened to live with Ash, his wife of ten years.
    He looked forward to getting there. He loved the peacefulness of the place and even though it was expensive, he thought it was worth it. In the ads, the owners promoted the place as being “without screaming or crying, without toys or laughter, Envision is the
perfect
place to live.”
    Ed knew they were right. He’d never wanted children and wanted them even less now that he saw the kinds of boneheads that
did
want them. In his mind, you had to be pretty stupid to want kids in this day and age. Not to mention selfish.
    Dumb asses.
    He approached the gatehouse at the front of Envision and the guard waved him through, raising the gate with barely a glance. Ed drove straight to his house, exactly like all the others.
    Ash’s car was in the driveway and he pulled the Trinidad in behind it, climbing out and stretching, regarding the day with a mixture of suspicion and hopefulness. It was only 10:30 am, still plenty of time for the day to improve. He walked along the flagstone path to his front door and entered the house, calling for his wife.
    He found her in the computer room, chain-smoking, a cup of coffee that was almost certainly cold near her hand .
    “Hey, Ash,” he said from the doorway.
    “Ed. What are you doing here?” This without taking her eyes from the computer screen.
    “Got a few hours before the next brat is due. You in a chat room?” It was a foolish question. Ash was
always
in a chat room.
    “Yep. Coffee should still be warm.”
    “Thanks.” He hesitated, thinking he should say something else, but when he couldn’t think of anything, he turned and walked off towards the kitchen, leaving her to her online friends.
     Ash was wrong. The coffee wasn’t still warm, but Ed poured himself a mug anyway and heated it in the microwave. He carried the steaming cup into the living room, sat down in his favorite recliner and switched on the tube. His vision was still slightly blurry but the sting was now being drowned out by the ache in his right hand. The ache was a familiar one, though not constant. Not yet. But soon enough, Ed knew it would be. You could only punch so many people before your bones started protesting.
    He held his coffee in his left hand and gave his right an occasional shake, wondering if he should pop a few ibuprofen before the ache really began to scream at him.
    Keeping his eye on the clock, he drank his coffee and watched afternoon crap on TV.
    Eventually, Ash emerged from the computer room and Ed noticed she was still wearing her bathrobe and slippers. He watched his wife pass by him with barely a nod and wondered what had happened to the woman he’d married.
    Ash worked in a gas station/convenience store combo part-time, had long dry black hair that was in a constant state of disarray, smoked and drank too much and was growing thicker through her mid-section with every passing year.
    And she had a temper. The temper that had once seemed so sexy to Ed when they first met was no longer attractive in any way. When she was drunk—which was every night she didn’t have to work—she would often get surly and sarcastic, sometimes pitching fits, screaming and throwing things at Ed. It was during these times that Ed prayed for a baby to be born so he could leave and go punch someone.
    He tried not to take his frustrations with his wife out on the mothers at the hospital, and for the most part he succeeded. But every so often, when one of the women was particularly obnoxious or tried to fight with him or made him chase them around the hospital, he would lose it and hit her a little too hard. He was always sorry afterwards, and made it a point to tell them so, but sometimes it was difficult not to haul off and knock their damn blocks off.
    Ed knew it was the same for other Mother Punchers and suspected that the mothers he worked with were among the luckiest mothers of all. Some guys just really and truly hated women and sometimes that was their sole purpose for even applying for the job. So they could clock women all day. Those kinds of guys, Ed wanted to clock himself and would have if given the chance.
    The only time Ed actually felt joy from his job when was he found some weasely father hiding under the bed or in the john, letting his wife take a punch that he deserved just as much as she did.
    Fuck those guys, Ed thought, sipping his coffee. He hoped there would be a father around when he got back to the hospital later.
     “Why are you home?” Ash asked, coming into the living room.
    “I told you, I have a few hours until the next kid comes.”
    “Oh.” She glanced around the room, her dark eyes vacant. Ed wondered if she’d put anything in her morning coffee, though he doubted it. Ash was an alcoholic—there was no denying that—but she preferred wine to the hard stuff. Wine that came in a box. That was her drink, her constant evening companion.
    She reached into her robe and brought out a pack of Virginia Slims, shaking one out and sticking it between her chapped lips. “Whatcha watching?”
    “Ash, don’t light that cigarette in here.” Ed hated that his wife smoked and was forever reminding her to do it outside, which she did probably less than half the time he was home and never when he wasn’t.
    “This is my house too!” she barked at him. “I pay for it just as much as you do.”
    “Yeah, but these are my lungs and my heart. Smoke outside, please.”
     Ash rolled her eyes and shuffled out of the room. He heard the slider in the kitchen open and close and he felt a sense of relief wash over him. He didn’t feel like getting into it with her today. He just wanted to drink his coffee in peace, stretch out in his own chair and relax before he had to go back to work.
    On the television, a talk show host was seated next to a young woman who was deathly afraid of pickles. She, in turn, was seated next to a woman who was deathly afraid of kittens. Not cats. Kittens. Ed had to wonder if these loons were putting on an act, just so they could get themselves on television and have their fifteen minutes of fame. He huffed and swallowed tepid coffee. He’d had fame once and didn’t think it was anything to write home about. From where he stood, all fame did was attract a lot of wackos. Sure, he’d met a few cool people back in his boxing days, but most of them were nuttier than a fruit cake and just trying to get something out of him.
    He shook his head at the TV screen and his stomach grumbled. He watched for a while more, until a woman came on the stage who was terrified of tin foil and screamed hysterically when the host showed her a balled-up sheet of it.
    Ed had seen enough. He clicked off the TV and went in search of food, glancing out at the back yard as he passed the slider. Ash was still out there on the bench swing he’d put at the back of the property a few years ago. It was near the tree line and quite a peaceful place to sit and think. He’d originally thought it would be a nice place to cuddle with his wife, but it didn’t turn out that way. It was now just a solitary spot and he couldn’t remember the last time they’d sat on it together.
    With a twinge of sadness, he moved to the refrigerator and began the process of making himself two ham and cheese sandwiches. He dumped half a bag of corn chips on his plate, grabbed a soda from the fridge and was on his way back to the living room when someone rapped on the glass slider. He flinched, ready to shout at Ash for scaring him, but it wasn’t Ash on the other side of the door.
    It was Drizzle.
    Ed looked past him and saw Ash still on the bench swing, smoking and watching Drizzle with a bored expression.
     Gritting his teeth, Ed set his lunch on the counter and went over and opened the slider. “What are you doing here, Drizzle? How did you get inside Envision?”
    Drizzle grinned toothily. “Came all the way through the woods,” he said proudly. “Six miles.”
    “Jesus Christ. What do you want?”
    The young man’s face fell and he pushed his thick glasses back up his nose. “To hang out with you. There’s some new stuff going on with the fan club that I wanted to run by you.”
    Ed groaned. The fan club. Good God.
    Drizzle was a geeky guy of about 23, skinny as a toothpick, with orange-red hair and freckles covering every inch of his skin. He was also teetering on the dangerous edge of being Ed’s one current stalker, in addition to being the founder of the official Ed Means fan club.
    “I don’t want to know anything about the fan club,” Ed said sharply. “I told you that. That’s your thing, not mine.”
    “Yeah, but it’s really cool, Ed. Wait till you hear about it.”
    “There’s nothing cool about a guy your age obsessing over an old boxer like me. You need to get a job. Get a girlfriend. Or boyfriend, sheepfriend, whatever. You need to start leaving me alone.”
    Drizzle looked genuinely wounded. “Ed, you’re gonna like this. I swear!”
    “You interrupted my lunch, Drizzle. Now take a hike.”
    “I just came through six miles of woods to tell you this, since you changed your phone number again. Give me a break here, man. I’m doing this for you.”
    Ed scowled at the kid, but saw the seriousness in Drizzle’s eyes and decided to give him one small, tiny, minuscule, minute break. “Ok,” he said. “Make it quick.”
    Drizzle grinned. “The fans have all agreed to tell me whenever they know a pregnant woman.”
    Waiting for more, Ed folded his arms across his chest. “So?”
    “So….they tell me, I tell you. It’s perfect.”
    Ed resisted the urge to give the kid a shove and slam the door. He felt a headache coming on. “What’s perfect? Why the fuck should I care about pregnant women? You think I don’t get enough of them at work?”
    “Moonlighting,” Drizzle said, eyes wide with excitement. “Don’t you want some extra cash?”
    “I have enough money. I live in Envision, for Christ’s sake. Doesn’t that tell you I have enough money?”
    “Yeah, it’s a lifestyle, I know. But just think about it: the government will slip you some under the table cash for doing the chicks who won’t go to the hospital. You know the ones who decide it’s better just to have the kid at home and never tell a soul that they’re even pregnant.”
     Ed was getting bored with the conversation and let it be known. “That’s not my business, Drizzle, and it shouldn’t be yours either.”
    “But, they put a strain on everyone’s taxes,” Drizzle protested.
     “Bye Drizzle.” Ed put his huge left hand against the kid’s scrawny chest and gently shoved him backwards, further away from the door.
    “If you don’t want it,” Drizzle said quickly. “I can always call Bowie. He’ll even give me a cut. I wasn’t gonna ask you for a cut…but…but…I
could
, you know!”
    The name Bowie froze Ed where he stood. “You already talked to Bowie?”
    “Not yet,” Drizzle told him. “But if you don’t want the deal, I know he will.”
    The kid was right. Bowie was a notorious scumbag, a bounty hunter for the government, seeking out breeders and doing more than giving them a single punch for their troubles. It was said that Bowie would often beat the shit out of them and sometimes—Ed hoped this part wasn’t true but he didn’t know for sure—sometimes they said he didn’t even wait until after the woman had given birth. He started pounding on them while they were still pregnant. Sometimes in the middle of their labor and sometimes, he wouldn’t do just a head shot. It was said he would pound them in the guts, too.
    Bowie gave all Mother Punchers a bad name and Ed couldn’t stand it. He was an unscrupulous vulture without a single strand of moral fiber in his entire body.
    Ed reached out grabbed Drizzle by the front of his shirt and jerked him forward. “You do any business with that prick and I will personally rip off your balls and feed them to you. You got that, dickhead?”
     Drizzle let out a little squeal of fright, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Then you do business with me, man. Otherwise, I got no choice.”
    “You got a choice!” Ed shook him hard. “Do it and I’ll fuck you up. That’s your choice.”
    “No way, man.” Drizzle shook his head and Ed was amazed and impressed by the kid’s bravery. “You fuck me up and I’ll just go to Bowie that much quicker.”
    “I can’t fucking believe you’re trying to blackmail me,” Ed said wonderingly.
    “I’m not! I’m trying to give you an opportunity. More cash, more kudos from the suits. It’s win-win, man. I’m telling you!”
    Ed released his grip on Drizzle’s shirt and rubbed his face, feeling the sandpaper texture of his cheeks and chin. “Son of a bitch.”
    “It’ll be awesome, man,” Drizzle said, smiling again. “Even better than when I had the troops tag every building and bridge with ‘Ed Means is still the champ of the world’.”
    “Oh, yeah, that was great,” Ed said sarcastically. “I got called into the fucking police station on that one.”
     Ignoring him, Drizzle repeated, “Awesome, man.”
     “What’s awesome?” Ash asked, coming up behind Drizzle.
    “Nothing,” Ed said quickly. He gave Drizzle a look of warning but either the kid didn’t notice it or didn’t care. He turned to Ash and said, “I got a deal with the Dimes.”
    Dimes were what everyone called the folks who would report an undocumented pregnancy.
    “What kind of deal?” Ash asked.
    “You know…they call me, I call the big guy here. We go, wait for the chick to pop out the gremlin, give her a sock in the jaw, take a pic and be on our way. Five hundred bucks per.”
     Ash’s eyes widened. “Five hundred bucks? For a single punch?”
    “Yep.” Drizzle grinned like some of the proud papas Ed had seen now and again and it made his stomach turn.
    “I’m not doing it, Ash. We don’t need the money.”
    “The hell we don’t! I just bought a new car, remember? You think it’s gonna pay for itself?”
    “You said you would pay for it!”
    And you believed me? I work in a fucking gas station, Ed. It’s a fucking Firebird! How exactly am I supposed to pay for a new fucking Firebird?”
    “Take it back!” he shouted.
    “No! I love that car! I’ve always wanted one, my whole life! And now you don’t want me to have it. You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that, Ed?”
    “Fuck!” Ed swung his fist, aiming for the wall beside the door but stopped himself at the last instant. His hand was still hurting after all. “Fuck!”
    “Easy there, big fella,” Drizzle said cheerfully. “That car could be paid off in just a few months.”
    “That’s bullshit,” Ed said. “You know how much that piece of shit cost?”
    “Hey!” Ash shouted, offended.
    “Well,” Drizzle went on. “Maybe not a few months, but pretty soon. And you’d be doing the government a favor.”
    “Fuck the government,” Ed yelled, pacing now.
    “Watch it, Ed!” Ash warned. “They sign your paychecks.”
     Ed said nothing, certain he had steam coming from his ears.
     As a reminder, Drizzle said one word: “Bowie.”
    Ed wanted to kill him and that was saying something. Despite being violent his entire professional life, he’d never wished to actually kill a person. Fuck them up good, yes, but kill them? Never.
    “Fuck,” he said again.
    “Just do it, Ed,” Ash said. “It’s really no different from what you do now.”
    “She has a point,” Drizzle agreed.
    Ed’s cell phone rang and he snatched it off his belt and growled “Hello” into it, while glaring at Ash and Drizzle.
    It was the maternity nurse, Sandy. “Looks like she’s going sooner than we thought,” she said, referring to the pregnant woman they had discussed earlier. “You should get back here asap.”
    “Ok.” Ed pushed ‘end’ and told them, “I have to go to work.”
    Ash reached into her robe for her cigarettes while Drizzle called after him, “Think about it, man! Made in the shade!”