“Fall”

unfinished

He first did it he was in Kindergarten.

It was a clear, sunny autumn day. A little girl, Lori, had pushed him out of his swing, taken it for herself. He looked at her and her bouncy brown pigtails and said, “Fall.” And she did. Landed right on her face like … a five-year-old.

He didn’t realize then what had happened. He didn’t really put it together until junior high. It’d taken getting stuffed into a trashcan headfirst by a bunch of future frat guys. The aftermath of that hadn’t been as … ephemeral as what had come before. He’d almost felt bad about it, save for the fact that getting stuffed into a trashcan had stuck with him. He grew to like the nickname. Mostly.

After that, he told his friends and they’d put it to the scientific method. He experimented on all of them late at night over bags of Cheetos and 2 liters of Coke. They all thought it was hilarious. He tried all the words and phrases he could think of (one word commands only, and he had to mean it), found the limits (or so he thought) and developed the Rules. He had to have the Rules, because when it was just him, it scared him a little. He didn’t want to do anything he couldn’t live with.

Like what he was being asked to do that very moment.

“Trash.”

He blinked, focused on the short-haired brunette sitting across from him. “No, Ronnie, I’m not doing it.”

“Why? You’ve seen how he treats her?”

“Yes.”

“So you will?”

“No.”

Veronica had both her hands on the table between them. She squeezed them into fists hard enough to make her forearms shake.

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“You won’t.”

He half-nodded. “I won’t.”

“For the love of God, why not?”

“Because it’s wrong. Because it scares me. Because there’s no coming back from something like that. Fuck, I don’t know. Pick one. But no matter what, it violates the Rules.”

“Fuck your rules, Trash.”

She shifted her weight, put her hands on the tabletop, and began to stand.

He said, “Stop,” and she did, half out of the black vinyl booth, leg into the aisle. He watched her eyes widen, then narrow. Her arms trembled as she tried to move them. He felt queasy. Then he let the echo of the command die in his mind. She slid the rest of the way out of the booth.

“That’s why the rules, Ronnie.”

She turned and left the diner, which he felt rather than saw such as he was focused on the coffee cup turning slow circles on the table between his fingers. He wondered if she’d be back, or rather whether or not she would be at home when he got there.

Veronica was one of the three or four people on campus who knew. He’d made the mistake of telling her the night they’d met. Yes, they’d been drinking. Yes, he’d been trying to impress her, to the point that he didn’t mind when she’d played with his power like a new toy for weeks. They’d made the food court into their playground for a time.

She’d even begged him to do it to her, but he hadn’t. Not until now.

“You wouldn’t like it,” he said to the table, just like he’d said to her 100 times before.