Wild Nothing CH2-CH3

CH2
Waking up. Going outside. I see the bike is gone, frustrating but not unexpected. I was bound to skip up at some point. Oh well, new agenda. Step 1: get bike back. Ok what do I need? I guess I should brush my teeth and get dressed for the day. Sigh. I was going to relax today, maybe try to catch up on some work, maybe play some Gwent on my PS4, see if my buddies wanted to play Rocket League.  Maybe play some piano, or read, if I'm lucky. I brush my teeth as I'm thinking. Why do I never have time to read? Too much things going on, never the long spanse of boredom to just spend my time, existing. Get the back of the teeth. That's good, now the tongue, push the bristles at a 45-degree angle to get under the gums. Ok that's good. Let's get dressed and go.

I walk out the door and start jogging unhurriedly down the street, whispering, staring at the ground as it passes under my feet.

CH3
The young man showed up in an Uber after a light lunch at a local diner, got out of the car and thanked the driver. The location was an old sprawling but fairly well kept junkyard-slash-machine body shop out one of the highways outside the perimeter about 25 minutes from his house. After thanking the driver, he closed the door and watched with his hands in his pockets as the car drove past him, before he started walking casually across the street. He walked to the corner of the machine shop and around the building through the gate which was open and into the area behind the shop which was used as a sort of overflow parking lot adjacent to the junkyard. The large bay doors of the machine shop were open and there were about 8 to 10 people working inside. The man could see several of them but they hadn't noticed him, which was for the best, obviously.

He walked up to his bike which was in exactly the condition he had left it in the night before, albeit perhaps a bit dustier. He threw his right leg around the back of the bike in a bopping motion and landing on the custom seat sitting straight up with perfect balance as to not tip the bike on the uneven pavement. It was at this moment that something happened inside the building.

"Who the fuck is that on the ride Shelby brought last night?" One of the men inside, a head shaved-tattooed slightly hispanic very hard looking man named Hector, but referred by everyone in the shop as simply Caba, which was slang for "Head" in Spanish.

Caba didn't even need to motion as he headed out the bay doors into the hot Atlanta summer air outside, because as his determined strides brought him within a few feet of the young man, who was still sitting bestride his motorcycle, the rest of Caba's crew fanned out and encircled the two men. If some of the men knew that the started and power in the Ducati was maybe just fast enough for a skilled driver to bust out of the human fence before one or more of them could drag him off the bike, they didn't show it.

"What the fuck, homie, are you trying to get messed up?" Caba with an audible sigh and a slouch of his shoulders, as the young man climbed off the still unstarted Ducati. It was worth a shot, anyway, he thought to himself.

"Look," he said to the group, "I get you don't understand the mistake you've made, so I'm just going to take my bike home, ok?"

Incredulous, but also getting angry, Caba spat "Look homie, you loco! I don't know what you mean your bike but you'd better get gone before you make me mess you up for wasting my time."

"This is my bike, I'm taking it." The youth said. Not taking a stance. Standing almost sad, head slightly tilted downward in an act not of complete submission, but of deference. As if ashamed and asking for forgiveness.

"Ok whatever you want, bro," Caba said. "Andre knock this fool out."

At which a truly monstrous image of a human being stepped forward with gleeful sadistic determination, he walked towards the youth casually, relishing the upcoming moment of fear registering on his face and the subsequent pain and finally humiliation that was now about to incur at his grimy, grease stained hands. Because even though he clumsily helped about the shop, this was what he was really here for, in a few more steps he would be able to sate his cruel need for inflicting torment on others.

"You're dead," The young man said, not pointing but almost with a flick of a finger but not quite raising his arm.

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the advancing brute dropped to the concrete banging his head, hard, on the pavement with a dull thwack, like a 280 lb meat-bag puppet cut from it's strings.

At the same moment several things happened. About half the people enclosing the young man turned and fled, about half of those left backed away, cautiously withdrawing due to a mixture of fear, responsibility, and disbelief. The remaining quarter except one neither moved more seemed to register the event, but stood transfixed as they evaluated the situation with total focus and concentration. The youth among this group, and the others were at the youth's mistaken estimation his primary concern. The exception was Caba himself who, although the youth mistook it for flight, dropped to one knee with his elbow reaching around his back as he pulled his firearm from the belt behind his back, whipped around his bun and opened fire.

Caba shot a quick succession of five shots out of his 10-shot magazine. At the shooting range he would practice this movement repeatedly working on precision and speed. He always aimed for the head and typically got 4 of 5 shots lethal at this close a range, hence his name, "Caba".

Three of the bullets stopped mid-air a few centimeters from the young man's head, as the other two passed just outside the silhouette of the youth's body. At this point as the bullets fell to the floor and the remaining bystanders decided they had had enough and it was time to go, decided to flee.

"I can't believe you just did that," the youth said, "like seriously what the fuck man. Somebody says 'you're dead' and points to a guy and the guy drops dead so you decide to SHOOT at this person? Like I have no fucking idea what to do with you right now I'm so mad."

"..." Caba, realizing for the first time, as the reality of the situation he was in settled into his consciousness, like a square wheel turning, began to feel an emotion he had pushed down, fought, ignored, but no longer could keep out: fear.

"Your fucking arm is off," The youth said.

Incredulously, questioning, Caba looked at the youth. As nothing happened he began to back away and look around as if expecting a bird to fly at his head or perhaps a sniper shot to end his life.

"Uh," Raising his hand and pointing, "I SAID, your FUCKING arm is OFF!"

At the same moment, Caba's arm was ripped form his body by an unseen force, and flung across the lot to hit the wall with a splat and land in a bloody stump in the gravel by the corner of the lot.

Blood spurting everywhere, Caba began to scream "AhhhH!" as no sound he had ever uttered before. The few bystanders who had withdrawn to a safe distance to watch nearly puked, they had stayed to be able to provide a detailed report come the time that they would have to explain the events of the day, or possibly face a painful or deadly punishment by an upset family interrogator. At some point you just have to say enough is enough. In unison, they also turned away from their viewing spots around corners, and behind cars, and vacated the premises.

As Caba lay there, screaming, holding the blood pouring stump that used to be his arm, the youth began apparently talking to himself.

"Do you think that's lethal?" The young man asked, seemingly to himself.

"Probably, in all likelihood," Responded a deep voice from the thin air slightly up and over the right shoulder of the youth.

Speaking again to Caba, "You have a hole punched through your head."

As the brains, and most of the facial features for that matter, of the shop boss formerly known as Caba exploded out the back of Caba's head to splatter in a Pollack-type pattern across the brand new black and red paint job of a GT-3000 Turbo the shop had brought in last week, and with nobody left around to see, a shape began to materialize. Huge, bulking, with a massive torso ending in goat legs, bent back the way knees can't go, with a deep red leather skin, massive neck muscles, human but overly large facial features except the very large pointy ears and gigantic shiny black bull horns protruding from the forehead of the Jinni.

"That was a joke stupid. Let's go" said the boy, as he got on his bike, started the engine, and idled over the gravel parking lot, screeching peeled away down the road.