Free Made to Break by D. Foy

moon? I know how you are, Lucy. Hang the cost! Shit . You care so much for Dinky you just sent him into a hurricane for a bag of ice.”
    Basil rose. “I should cave your skull in right fucking now.”
    My hands flipped up to frame my face with a set of waggling fingers. Somewhere in my heart I’d hoped to look like Munch’s screaming man. “I’m sooooo fwightened,” I said. And then I snarled. “You cock head. If you had anything in your skull to make it worthwhile, I’d have done you a lifetime back.”
    Basil stood there in his suit of mud. He still had that blackface, and the hat besides, perched on his head like an ugly bird.
    â€œI’m your boss ,” he said. “Remember that? In fact, now that I think about it, I’m your former boss.”
    â€œI never worked for you.”
    â€œI suppose I’m not the one who’s been signing your checks these last eight years then.”
    â€œYou jerk. Everyone here knows your grandma owns the buildings. That she got from your grandpa no less. All of which makes you nothing but a trust-fund piece of crap with insurance and fancy clothes.”
    My friend was fazed, I could see, but that didn’t keep him from shooting back. “It’s a hell of a lot better than being a talent-lacking toilet-scrubber,” he said.
    â€œ Dinky’s sick, he must die—Lord, have mercy on us! ”
    Hickory had stayed by Dinky throughout, hand-in-hand,passing the rag along his brow. Now she turned our way with liquid eyes.
    â€œPlease, you guys,” she said. “Stop.”
    â€œ Dinky’s sick, he must die— ”
    â€œShut up!” Basil said.
    â€œDinky,” Lucille said, “we’re going to get you out of here.”
    â€œAfter Pac Bell comes in to fix the phone we might,” I said.
    â€œ Dinky’s sick, he must— ”
    â€œDinky,” Lucille said.
    â€œ He must die—Lord, have mercy on us !”
    â€œHe doesn’t even know what he’s saying anymore,” Hickory said.
    â€œMaybe Super’s still around,” I said.
    â€œWhat?” said Lucille.
    â€œ Fuck that guy,” said Basil.
    â€œNo,” I said. “I mean, if he’s around, so’s his truck. He had to get here somehow, didn’t he?”
    â€œ If we can find him,” Hickory said.
    â€œMaybe we can. Me and Basil, I mean. At least we can try.”
    â€œThe hell I am. After what he did to me?”
    â€œWhat he did to you ?” said Lucille. “I thought you said he was just some old nut.”
    â€œBut you don’t know. The guy’s a freak, as in for real. It’s like he’s the actual devil or something.”
    â€œThat doesn’t mean he won’t help us,” I said.
    â€œI’m not going anywhere.”
    Another fit had settled over Dinky, the coughing again, the same spewing again of blood and phlegm. I smoothed his blanket and dabbed his mouth. Hickory told me to kill my smoke, so I got up and took about fourteen slugs of bourbon. Then I went into the storm, hollering out for some wild old man, with his wasted monkey and bed of dolls and dog standing quietly by.An emptiness had opened up inside me. The night was wet and black and empty and cold, and I was scared, more so than I’d ever been. Maybe this is it , I thought, maybe this is where I’ll see the face no one but the dead have ever seen. But maybe I won’t be dead, just almost-dead, just passed out kind of in a forest of mud, curled up like some little bald worm in the mud.
    Â 
    THERE ARE TIMES YOU SEE THE ROT YOU’VE always been. My days were a trail of liquor-store bumblings and sunrise guilt, and every penny I’d earned these years had come to rest in a dirty glass. I’d ceased caring for others, and definitely for myself. The only things that mattered were booze and books. Scrubbing toilets—the very ones I’d puked into so