Dastardly Bastard
Edward Lorn
Dedication
In memory of Patricia Carr-Wright. Gone, but not forgotten.
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO Christopher McCord and Christopher Martin. Thank you both for showing up right when I needed you.
To my mother, for giving me the good ones, and my dad, for giving me the bad ones. I have finally come to grips with the fact that they must coexist. They are, after all, what have made me who I am. Thank you.
“Friends depart, and memory takes them to her caverns, pure and deep.”
—Thomas Haynes Bayly
“Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.”
—Edmund Burke
The Dastardly Bastard of Waverly Chasm
Does gleefully scheme of malevolent things
Beware, child fair, of what you find there
His lies, how they hide in the shadows he wears `Cross wreckage of bridge, is where this man lives Counting his spoils, his eye how it digs
Tread, if you dare, through his one-eyed stare This Dastardly Bastard is neither here, nor there…
Pre-Chasm
1
MARK SIMMONS WAS SWEATING, WHEEZING, and feeling every bit of his five hundred pounds as he stepped off Corsican International Flight 600. The flight attendant at the gate asked if he was okay when he dropped off his seat belt extender. He waved her off with a limp wrist, staggering toward the seats just inside the departure area. He could’ve bitched about having to buy an extra seat to accommodate his size, but he’d fought that battle, and it never worked out in his favor.
Mark crashed into the plastic chair. The seat screeched and groaned while he tried to get comfortable. His massive rear end flowed over the edges, the steel armrests digging into his love handles.
“Look, Mom!” a little girl squealed. “He’s so fat!”
“Deborah!” The mother offered Mark a soft smile that might’ve said, “Kids say the darnedest things,” before turning to make a call on her cell phone.
The air conditioning from the vent above blew down like a saving grace. Basking in the chilly air, he felt the sweat on his face become gelid. He relaxed back into the hard plastic and worked on his breathing.
One… two… three… four…
He counted his breaths like an insomniac tallying sheep. The routine calmed him. It always did.
Fifteen minutes, and a count of twelve-hundred, finally returned some of Mark’s strength. He still had to walk to baggage claim, then to Hertz, before trekking out into the parking lot to get his rental vehicle. The twenty-hour drive into New York would give him plenty of time to rest. He didn’t need sleep. He needed the road.
When the higher-ups decided there was money to be made in sending their fattest journalist to cover the withdrawal of American soldiers from Iraq, Mark hadn’t refused, thinking maybe the time spent there would expedite a promotion. Four months earlier, before he had left for Iraq, he’d started Weight Watchers with the intention of losing fifty pounds in preparation for traveling to one of the hottest climates on Earth. That diet lasted all of two hours, ending in a refrigerator raid that rivaled the Bay of Pigs insurgency. Fallujah hadn’t been as hot as expected, so the failed diet hadn’t hurt him too badly, but most Iraqis studied him with a cautious glare. Mohammad must have spoken of the evils of fat people because those Muslims skirted Mark as if being obese were contagious.
Mark bent forward, using his belly as a counterweight, and pushed himself out of the chair. His hips caught on the armrests, but the forward momentum couldn’t be stopped, and he ripped a belt loop. Cussing under his breath, he looked up and found the little girl—Deborah, her mother had called her Deborah—staring at him. Her tongue lolled from her mouth, eyes crossed, fingers hooked inside her cheeks. She made one hell of a face. Mark smiled, but instead of contorting his own mug in response, he just flipped her off. The look on little Deborah’s face proved him the victor of their little battle.
It’s the little things in life, he thought as he shuffled toward baggage claim.
Deborah’s raised voice faded in the distance as she told her mother about how the fat man had just “made a naughty” with his finger.
~ * ~
Mark waited three hours for his single piece of luggage because someone had packed an ounce of Iraqi’s Finest Kush in her suitcase. Customs had a field day with the twenty-something woman, even dragged her off for a full-body. Mark figured he needed to change his career choice. Feeling up hot young females on a regular basis could serve him well. Being an overweight fifty-year-old with a whiskey drinker’s libido, he didn’t get much play. Sure, Private Johnson still stood at attention, but not for long. Doctor Patel said its functionality was being impaired by his gut. No shit. He couldn’t even jack off anymore. His dick-to-arm ratio was sorely impaired by the girth of his stomach, neither being long enough to reach around his rotund midsection.
Finally allowed to procure his belongings, he moved on toward Hertz. He mentally thanked the inventor of the moving floor contraption. The thing wasn’t quite an escalator—escalators, by definition, escalated—but dragged people along at a normal walking pace across a smooth section of floor. He didn’t know what the hell to call the tank-track looking device. A lazy person’s treadmill?