The Mentor

The
Mentor

a
novel by

Pat
Connid

Copyright © 2012 by Pat
Connid

All rights reserved. Except
as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication
may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or
stored in a database or retrieval system, without orders signed in triplicate,
sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost
again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as
firelighters
(alternately, written permission from the
author will suffice
).

Certain characters in this
work may seem terribly familiar (ie. celebrity reference) but it can be assured
these are, in fact and in total, complete fabrications, and thus no libelous
implications about the upstanding and fine nature of any of the aforementioned
celebrities they may coincidentally resemble is to be inferred by the reader;
as this work is translated from its original Sanskrit, any phrases or names
that appear to invoke said similarity are by chance, the expression of which will
be edited and feverishly adjusted at the first hint of trouble.

For My Wife

Sorry about
the occasional, low-grade insanity.  And thank you for putting up
with me, those times I'm once again swallowed by that world.  I thought (at
the very least) I should introduce you to some of the friends I've made there.

See
attached.

Chapter
One

My best
guess is that I woke up because the cargo van hit a speed bump or seam in the
pavement or sleeping transient, and I bounced like a bug in the microwave.

I tried to push
myself up but another bump had just been waiting for me. I got thwacked by the
van floor again, my tailbone hammering the bare, corrugated metal.  My
head spun (well, spun
more
), and I flopped over onto my spongy stomach,
then back again.

Beneath the
whine of the van’s engine, there was still the faint echo of my dream.
 Don’t think it was a very good one.

When I
pressed my chin into my chest, forcing my head to steady, and it became clear
there wasn't anyone in the driver’s seat, I set my contemplative dream analysis
aside for the moment.

Struggling
to my knees, I clawed at the bare, inner skeleton of the cargo van. 

Then, it
felt as if the vehicle had taken a deep breath…

I looked up
to see nothing but blue sky filling the windshield. In my dream-wake state, I
envisioned the vehicle's headlights were like eyes and, when
it
saw what
I couldn't, it tried to look away from what was coming.  

The van
tipped down hard, and I lost my balance.  Tumbling between the driver and
passenger seats, I was jammed hard in the back with the corner of something.
 

I looked
down.

A heavy-duty,
plastic toolbox had struck me, its handle banging away like an old English
bobby's baton.  I turned my head just as the van hit a final seam in the road.

This was where
the pavement met a slated, wooden dock and the vehicle’s hollow interior turned
into a soundstage, filled with a frantic Jon Bonham drum solo--
pitta fitta
pitta!
--  and I watched as the lip of the dock was swallowed by the
van’s hood, then suddenly everything went quiet for a moment.

Another
deep breath.

It was only
a few seconds before the van’s nose hit the water, and my doughboy body slammed
into the dashboard.  Again. 

I then
began drifting toward unconsciousness before even managing to get fully awake
from my previous bout of darkness.  Slipping away, I had one question
taking precedence over all others: How'd I get in a van?

ONLY A FEW
HOURS earlier, I’d come home from working at the movie theater.  

Sure, I was
twenty-six and still working at a teenager's job, but the hours were easy and
to make matters easier, I could drink there.  Well, we weren’t
allowed
to drink.  Simply, the manager never came downstairs.  

Ever.
 

There was a
pneumatic slot and a never-ending supply of plastic tubes for the cash that
traveled between downstairs and upstairs.  Some of us had a suspicion the
manager might not exist at all.  But, if he did exist, there had to be a giant
room with plastic tubes bouncing hard and bursting open, spewing cash onto the
floor, whilst he’s rolling around in piles of dough, stark naked, throwing
caution to the wind and dismissing concerns about paper cuts to his pink parts.

In truth,
nobody who worked there cared either way.  

We did our
jobs fairly well.  My best friend Pavan and I kinda sorta would get drunk every
night while we cleaned theaters and tore tickets for patrons.

It had been
around midnight when I’d walked the three deserted blocks home and climbed the
rotting stairs past
Wicked Lester’s
.  Someone had found the hidden
volume knob under their jukebox, cranking it up loud.  I walked up through
a haze of dust and dirt spat from the ancient, wooden paneling, and then I slid
into my apartment on the second floor.

Clicking
the switch by the door, the dull, orange light in the kitchen twinkled off the
beer can castle on the stove.  I dug into the half dozen bottles of beers
in the fridge and pulled one out, then settled onto my hard couch.

When I’d
moved in, years ago, there had been some furniture left in the apartment after the
last tenant skipped out on the rent in the middle of the night.  But as
anyone could guess, if someone was willing to leave furniture behind, it was
obviously the sort of stuff
worth
leaving behind.

I drank
half the beer in one tip of the bottle and tried to remember if the couch had
originally been there when I’d moved in.  Did I get it off Craigslist?
 I couldn’t remember.  Either way, it was a horrible couch.  It
smelled like an old person might have once died on it.  Given the odor's
bouquet, obviously the oldster had died of something involving bacon.

Didn’t
matter, it fit snuggly into my simple lifestyle.  Work, play, and be
happy.  

No. 

Edit: Work,
play,
drink beer
, and be happy.  

Maybe better:
drink beer, work, play, be happy.  

Whatever.

I had low
expectations from life and felt certain
life
shared the sentiment.
  Paid my taxes, turned the mattress every couple months, called my
mom as often as I could endure it, and sometimes-- when I walked by expired
parking meters-- tossed a quarter in
just to stick it to the man
.  

What you
put out is what you get back.  Like some sort of karmic flotsam and
jetsam; except, I don't really believe in karma.  I believe in balance—or maybe
more precisely: payback.  Problem is, though, everyone's working from a
different ledger. 

And if
they've got your name in a column and you don't have theirs? 

That's when
things can get out of hand, and you don't even see it coming.  I suppose that's
the best way I can describe how it all began that night.

Hindsight's
20/20… but it probably would have worked out better had I laid off the beer a
little.

Maybe not. 

In my
second-story apartment above the bar, the couch faced the corner where the two outside
walls met, its back to the kitchen.  The dining room, living room and
kitchen were essentially all just one space.  However, I'd designated dining
room from living room with the placement of my uncomfortable couch, like some
sort of shithole apartment
feng shui
.  

It made the
space a little more crowded, but gave some sense of a living area in the
apartment.  I suppose it was one step above Les Nesman and his masking tape
"walls."  A very small step. 

Where the
last tenant likely had a television—apparently the one piece of furniture they
felt valuable enough to take with them—there were two wooden, orange crates of
compact discs I’d collected over the years.  On top of that was a combination
clock/radio/CD player my mother had given me ten years earlier.  

Six months
prior to that night, one of my old Ozzy CDs started skipping.  It was either
Diary
or
Blizzard
… can't remember.  It was the one where the asshole producer
starts to
fade out
the song during an amazing Randi Rhodes guitar solo.
 A little drunk, I let years of being frustrated by that little musical
abomination get to me, and I kicked the tiny stereo against the wall.  

Sure, a
somewhat disproportionate reaction but it's a really, really good solo.  Now, I
have a hole in the wall and a busted CD player.

Clock still
works.

Most
nights, I fall asleep with my uniform on.  Black polyester pants, red
polyester vest and white dress shirt.  Working at the theater, the cuffs
of all of my shirts are permanently stained the color you might see on the
bottom of a homeless guy's feet.  All of my clothes smell like Playdough
for some reason.  

In my
closet
, there are anywhere
from four to seven outfits exactly like this, depending on what part of the laundering
cycle I am in.  Gilligan was a clothes horse compared to yours truly.

The music
downstairs, after passing up through my floor, became a dull thumping sound,
spiked with an occasional drunken, treble flutter.  Not exactly music
anymore.  Still, it was oddly soothing, as if it were reminiscent of some early
sensory memory.  Maybe this was the sort of thing a redneck baby might
hear in the womb of its redneck mama any night of the week as she worked the
brass pole at 
Poppers
.

At first, I
thought the sound of a
key in
my door's lock was just the loud music banging my empty beers cans around. 
I've passed out to that pleasant twinkling before-- a little like twelve-ounce
wind chimes.

Then, I
heard the door swing open because its hinges hadn’t been oiled since before the
invention of dirt.  Turning, I was surprised because I hadn’t had an
impromptu midnight visit from my sorta girlfriend, Laura, in a very long time.
 Midnight visits from Laura meant she was likely buzzed and horny.  I
was the former and, at the sound of the door opening, also instantly became the
latter.

However, I
am not attracted to men.  Especially large men.  

As the
large man rounded the corner at the end of the short hallway extending from my
front door, at first, I could only see the whites of his eyes.  Strangely, that
phrase instantly bounced around in my head in the most surprising way.  I
felt… odd.

“Dexter, so
glad you are in,” he said, flashing a perfect, toothy grin.  He’d crossed
the room so fast I’d lost sight of him twice.  However, he didn’t seem
strained by the effort, despite moving so quickly around the room.

Trying to
get up from the couch, get away, I felt my head swim.  I was buzzed, more
buzzed than I'd realized.  No way was I going to be able to defend myself
in this condition.  Honestly, I really can’t defend myself in any
condition, so the plan was the same if I'd been sober: run.  But, I couldn't.

So, I
braced for impact, but he didn’t hit me.  I must have looked stupid,
covering my head like some seven-year old’s first time in a carnival haunted
house.  Looking up, between my cola-stained sleeves, I saw that he’d sat
atop the two orange crates.  Briefly, I wondered where my clock had gone.

The fear began
over-clocking my brain, dampening the light in the room.  It was as if, unable
to run, my mind wanted to shut down and hide in some dark corner of my skull.

This
guy—calm, just staring at me with a smaller smile now— looked fit but not
overly muscular.  Honestly, I couldn’t be sure of that.  He was
wearing black jeans and a black bomber jacket.  Underneath, I think, he
had a black t-shirt on.  The man himself, also black. 

So, kind of
a theme then.

He wasn’t
bald, but his hair was trimmed close to his head.  One look at it, and I
was convinced it was perfect.  Odd, that word had come to my mind
again—perfect teeth, perfect hair.  But, that’s what I thought.  I
felt if the hair on the left side had been measured with a laser, it would
match the length on the right exactly.

Not that I
was interested in his hair, I was just too afraid to look at what might be
in his hands.

“Dexter,
you do not look well.”

“What do
you want, man?”

He crossed
his legs and put his hands on his knees.  I exhaled the breath that had
been trapped in my throat after finally realizing he wasn’t armed.

“What do I
want?  You mean what do I
really
want?  I don’t believe we
know each other that well yet, Dex."  He smiled wider.  I was
holding my breath again.  “What?  Do you think you and me are that close?
 Buddies who spill our inner most secrets to each other?  Hey, all
right.  You go first!”

He’d asked
me a question-- I think he did-- but, what was he talking about?  God, my
head… how’d I get so buzzed?

“Quickly,
then, so we can get started.”   He brushed away some invisible lint
or dust from his pant leg.  “What was the twelfth word the baker said to
you today?”

What?
 What the fu—

“Dexter,”
he said louder.  His smile faded by another degree.  The room was
vibrating even more now.  “Dexter, stay with me here.”

“Okay,
what?  Why… what do you want?”

Putting
both feet flat on the floor, a hand still on each knee, he said: “When you got
up this morning, you went downstairs for your morning sugar buzz.  What
was the twelfth word the baker said to you today?”

What the
hell he was talking about?  Was this some sort of code?  Or, it… what did
he say?  

“I don’t—“

“Dexter, if
you don’t tell me what I want to know I’m going to take one of your thumbs, cut
into the epidermis, through the muscle, snap the bone, strip away the sinew and
tendon, poke a hole in the end, and turn it into a key chain.”

I was now
less buzzed.

“You ever
try to hold a beer in your hand with no thumb, Dex?”  He added, the smile
entirely gone now.  “You
do
believe me, don’t you?”

Then, the
whole room began breathing around me— pulsing and suddenly alight, crackling
with electricity.  

Everything was
humming, quivering.