Free Fuckness by Andersen Prunty

probably made love to them. Making love sounds like two people are creating something and I knew DeHaven probably wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t creative.
    Bobby DeHaven made a lot of my evenings go by real quickly when I would lie there on my bed and wait and wait for them to play something by him. I didn’t really care when the mother threw my radio away though because, for some reason, they stopped playing Bobby DeHaven. But I still had the poster and I would look at the poster and all those songs would come back and make me happy for as long as I could lie there. I even made a few up myself.
    And that was what kept me content lying there in the dawn that morning, looking at that poster and telling myself that when I could finally get the hell out of Milltown I would run off and go on tour with Bobby DeHaven. I was pretty deluded at the time I had that thought, retarded with pain, swimming in and out of the morning blue.
    I heard trundling in the hallway before the mother barged into my room and strumbled, “You have to get up for school!”
    I had sort of drifted off into a slumber, like where the mind is still working but your eyes are closed. The first thing I said was, “But… the horns.” And I clicked them ominously against the wall. There was no way she could expect me to go to school with those things.
    “ I’ve already wrote a note to your teacher about that.” And she slapped the note down hard onto my chest, sending out those waves of pain. As she got closer to me I saw that some drool had worked its way out of her mouth, racing down one of her frownlines. That was her Drool of Fury. You know someone is mad when they cease caring about the retention of their bodily fluids.
    The drool wasn’t the only body fluid she was leaking. As my eyes focused, I noticed the ratty, blood-matted wig, how she seemed to be missing half her head or how it was sort of caved in or something. Last night came back to me in bright, flashbulb images that made me think of an autopsy.
    “ Get up! Get up!” she shouted a couple more times. Then, just as quickly as she had come, she turned to leave, her trundling dwindling toward the front of the house.
    I looked at the note and this is what it said:
    WALLACE HAS TOO WARE THESE HORNS FORE THE RETS OF HIS LIFE
    And it was signed: “Msr. Black.”
    I crumpled it up and put it in the pocket of my pants.
    I laughed nervously and decided to get out of the cot.
    I wondered if I should move real slowly so it wouldn’t hurt so much. Finally, I decided to just face the pain and do it as fast as possible and hope I got used to it. Like jumping into a pool or ripping a Band-Aid off. So I did this thing where I kind of threw myself up in the air and in the direction of the floor. It was sort of what I normally did, but this version was a little more intense. I knew I had to really put my all into it. By the time I realized what a horrible idea it was, it was way too late. My legs would barely move so I couldn’t bring them up in time to get the necessary lift that I needed. I collapsed onto the carpet with a loud thump. That jolt made that horrible grinding bonefeel shoot all the way through my body and I think I screamed then. No. I know I screamed because it brought Racecar rolling into my room, angry as ever.
    “ Come on, you fuckin pansy shit. I can’t eat breakfast around all that screamin. The sooner I eat my breakfast, the sooner I can get down in that basement. In here screamin like a fuckin little girl. You think I screamed when I got my legs lopped off? Huh! Do ya! You think I’d let those fuckin whiteshirts hear me screamin? Huh!”
    “ I don’…” I started, managing to get up on my hands and knees. My skin felt prickly, like it wanted to get up and move but my skeleton desperately wanted to slouch to the floor.
    “ Answer me, ass! Answer me !”
    Then I screamed again, but not out of any sort of bodily pain this time. I was mad and the anger sort of made all the