The People on the Inside

The way the POP System worked was simple.

Protect Our People.

Keyword: Our.

Our People.

Protect Our People.

Not your people.

Not their people.

Not all people.

OUR People.

This was the idea that undergirded the whole thing, made it work, made it tick. And it did work, did tick, like clockwork, like a slick machine. Because people took comfort in it. It helped them. Helped them to understand. It was simple. So simple. Protect Our People. Simple.

And you need something simple like that, really, when you’re dealing with people. People are so naturally complicated. They’re unpredictable. You just never know what they’re thinking, what they’re going to do next. POP fixed that, made it all easy, and all by turning three simple words into dogma eternal: Protect Our People. It doesn’t much matter anymore, of course; everyone’s dead or something close to it. Or they’re me, just far enough away from death that I can still see and think and push the occasional turd out the holes that used to be my ears. It’s funny, a real knee-slapper, even in this world with hardly any knees left to slap or hands to slap them with, and as usual, the joke’s on me: I never had a clue what people were really like on the inside until we all went…

POP!

Oops! Sorry about that. Just a minor explosion unballing the flabby flesh off my right shoulder into moist ropey wads that splatter onto the floor in a rain of wet smacks is all. Well, there goes my last spare eyeball. Just got the two I was born with left now.

Excuse me. Where was I?

Right. POP. Protect Our People. The System worked because it was simple and because it was comforting. Because at least when you knew the enemy of your friend was your enemy, you could rest easy in the knowledge that the enemy of your enemy was your friend. For some, POP was the only way to get to sleep at night. And for others, it was the only way to stay sane.

Because of course it was. Anyone with a brain between their ears understood it inherently. Of course not everyone could be together. Of course not everyone could be on the same team. I just wish I knew that sooner, wish I wasn’t the only one kept in the dark. Maybe then my life wouldn’t be as painful now. Maybe then I could have gone where everyone else has instead of being left behind. Maybe then I wouldn’t always be the odd man out, the one always looking desperately, longingly in.

#

“Dingo! What the hell! Let me in!!!”

“Full up, Weasel. You know that. Now quiet, I’m trying to concentrate.”

Dingo was whipping his butterfly knife around in the passenger seat of Mystic Eyes’ car, a white Honda Accord older than the wads of lint lodged in Wonderbaby’s innie. Mystic Eyes was driving, soaring down the crowded neon streets at double the speed limit. I’d never seen her being so careful. Maybe it was cause we had half the police precinct closing in on us and the other half…

“...is that a goddam barricade!?!?” I screamed like a little girl. I couldn’t help it. After all, I was hanging to the outside of the passenger seat window by the grip of my goddam fingerprints, wind whipping my hair and flapping my gums and peeling back my eyelids so that all I could see was through a watery, blurry stew of windburn and searing pain. Naturally me and Dingo were still buckass naked.

Why was I clinging so precariously to the outside of the car as we hurtled down the road at full throttle? Simple. The inside was full. Mystic Eyes was driving. Dingo was riding shotgun. The 107 girlfriends took up the backseat. And Dog was napping in the trunk. No room for me. I was the one left out.

The wind tore at me.

“We’re almost there!” shouted Mystic Eyes. She sounded like she was having the time of her life. “Hold on tight if you want to live!!!” She yanked the steering wheel. Six inches before we collided with the cop barricade, we swerved hard to the right and shot off the road. We were on some kind of twisting overpass that would have spun us onto the highway had we kept on it, but we didn’t so now we were sailing, skating air in a rumbly bullet of hot metal and exhaust.

Which, unluckily for us, weighed about two tons plus however much we all weighed together. We plummeted.

Right to where we needed to be: the foot of the bridge Wonderbaby lived under. This was where we were headed all along.

“I’m gonna kill him! Kill him! That rat bastard isn’t gonna live to see the sun!” Dingo yelled. He had been yelling such obscenities ever since Mystic Eyes told us the truth: that she had met Wonderbaby as a part of the Nighttrippers. This was back in the parking lot outside of Mystic Eyes’ place.

“Nighttrippers?” Dingo had asked the question on both our minds.

Mystic Eyes explained. The Nighttrippers were a group that went around the city trying to trip as many people as they could as discreetly as they could. They operated only at night. Hence the name.

“Is it just me…?” Dingo started.

I finished for him: “...or does that sound just like the Daytrippers?”

We looked at each other simultaneously.

Well,” I offered, “at least that explains how he got 11 trips in. I knew some of those photos looked suspiciously after dark.”

Yeah, that was my take. I mean I was pretty lukewarm on the whole deal to be honest. And if it was just me, I would have let the entire thing slide. I’d just tell Wonderbaby to stop inflating his scores and keep the Daytrippers and the Nighttrippers separate and that would be that. No problem. Whatever.

But Dingo wasn’t having that. You were either with Dingo or you were against him, and anyone who went behind our backs to join this rival group of trippers was on the shitlist as far as he was concerned. He was gonna let Wonderbaby have it tonight if it was the last thing he did, he said. By the way, Mystic Eyes was part of the Nighttrippers too, just to be clear, but that was ok cause she never tried to play both sides as part of the Daytrippers at the same time.

Well, now we had finally made it. Wonderbaby’s shack. It was a shoddy lean-to that never left the darkness, a hovel whose filthy murk even the light of the morning sun couldn’t burn away. It was under a bridge and at the exact right location that it never saw sunlight no matter the angle. Miraculously, we were all unharmed when the car hit ground. So it was time to head in.

“I’m gonna kill him! I’m gonna kill him!” Dingo kept saying. “And I’m gonna do it with this!”

Suddenly he whipped out a concealed weapon. Where he was concealing the thing was anyone’s guess considering he was in his birthday suit, but that wasn’t important. What was important was what the weapon was. I expected to see the glint off the blade of his butterfly knife. But instead…

I gasped. “Dude! Dingo! What the hell, man! That’s a goddam gun! Holy shit! Where the hell did you get that thing!”

“Wall-Mart. Sports section.”

Me and Dingo and Mystic Eyes crept towards the shack. The girlfriends stayed behind to watch the car and Dog was still in the trunk napping. We had popped the trunk so he'd have air. As we approached the shack I could hear the faint sound of sirens far away. But what hit my senses even harder was the stench. The Drip was right nearby and it stank. Of course Wonderbaby would hole up right near the thing, I thought. That explained why he always smelled so bad, though I figured part of it was his own smell too. More importantly, it was a no brainer that he’d live in such close proximity to it, considering the guy was pretty much one of its wackjob worshippers.

We neared the shack. Dingo kicked in the door. The half-rotten cardboard gave easily, slouched into a soft pile of mold and corrugation. “Here’s DINGO!” He whipped the gun back and forth, holding it on its side like he always mimed when me and him watched movies together. Heat was steaming from his nostrils, fire leaping from his eyes. He was serious. He was really serious about this. About icing Wonderbaby.

The place was pitch dark, a one-room shack, four crude wood and cardboard walls propped up against each other and roofed with sweat-reeking rags and thin slices of crusty steel. The floor was dirt, open earth, and the walls were covered in cockroaches, big and brown and glazed. I could hear their constant scuttle. They were everywhere except where the one window, just an opening pocket-knifed out of a cardboard portion of the wall, caught the sulfur light scattering through a copper fartcloud from the Drip and beamed it into a murky corner.

That’s where he was: Wonderbaby. Stinking in that same pair of overalls. Beard hanging the same, halfway to his crotch in tight curls, greasy and unwashed. Hair rapidly retreating off that same oily forehead. Everything about him was the same.

Except the bomb. It was wired and buttoned all to hell, a mess of cords and metal. He held it in his trembling hands. He was smiling.

“Have you betrayed us, Wonderbaby?” Dingo asked. He was pointing the gun right at him. “Have you betrayed me?”

Wonderbaby just kept smiling. His hands were shaking, not out of fear but out of excitement, elation. Like a crazy person. Like someone who didn’t even care that one wrong answer, one wrong move, could turn him into nothing more than a splat on the wall, a pasty blast of gray matter or guts among the mass of roaches. POP!

Well, maybe I was scared for him. I was shivering. Shaking. I couldn’t stop. “D-dingo…”

“What?” he growled.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Shut the hell up, Weasel,” Mystic Eyes said. She had her nail bat with her.

“Mystic Eyes, shut up,” Dingo said. Then he turned to me, gun still trained on Wonderbaby. “You don’t understand, Weasel.”

“What do I not understand?” My voice was shaking. “Dude, we’re all friends. We’re all Daytrippers. We were just hanging out a few hours ago. Remember? Just like always. Come on, man, this is nuts!”

“You don’t get it, Weasel, and you never have. I have to do this. Ok? I have to. Either you’re with us or you’re—”

POP!

Dingo never finished saying what he was trying to say. He was interrupted by something that in our confused minds sounded like the report of a pistol. But it wasn’t his. It wasn’t any gun.

It was just one of those stupid cockroaches exploding in the sweaty heat.

God I hate bugs.

Next thing I knew, I couldn’t tell my head from my ass from my spleen. Dingo ducked for cover, thinking he was in danger. Mystic eyes piled on. Then Wonderbaby dove into the fray, trying to wrestle the gun away from Dingo. At least I think that’s how it went down. I’m not really sure. Everything happened too fast and too messy to tell. Somehow, I got pulled in and ended up in the tangle of limbs and heads and grunting and dirt and sweat.

“Hands off, Wonderbaby!” Dingo yelled. Wonderbaby was aiming for the gun. Dingo kept trying to whip it away. In a flash of metal, I caught a single frame of the old man’s grip on the thing, shockingly strong. He was still holding the bomb.

“Kill him, Dingo! Slug his brains out!” Mystic Eyes was swinging her death bat wildly and kicking at anything and shouting for Dingo to scratch out Wonderbaby for good like he came here to do.

I was just trying to keep my head low and not throw up.

Suddenly the gun launched away, landed safely nearby in the soft dirt. Wonderbaby was first to react. Still clutching the bomb, he dove for it. Dingo dove after him, grasping at his hairy ankle. All he caught was air, and neither of them got to it first.

I did.

Panting, I picked the thing up, scrambled to my feet. It was heavy in my shaking hands, glinting back dull polluted moonlight in the dark.

“Good!” Dingo beamed. “Toss, Weasel!”

I froze.

Then, before anyone could do anything, Wonderbaby swiped the gun right out of my hands and ran off.

For a second, there was silence, like the three of us left behind were just trying to process what happened.

Then Dingo went POP. He shouted. Kicked one of the walls. The flimsy thing came crashing down, and the whole house collapsed with it, right on top of us. We struggled out from under the avalanche of soggy wood and filth. There were bugs all over me, cockroaches crawling, falling off, scuttling back into the darkness and the moldy damp of the collapse. My everything was aching. I felt like I had about a million splinters.

We just sat around. Dingo was looking at me like I was a piece of trash. Mystic Eyes was fishing her bat out of the pile that used to be Wonderbaby’s house.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Weasel?” Dingo said. “Why the hell did you do that?”

‘What?” I looked at Dingo. I was panting. I didn’t even realize I was out of breath until I noticed I could barely catch it.

“You were supposed to toss me the gun. Now look what you did. Friggin Wonderbaby has the gun now.”

“What do you think he’s planning on doing with the bomb?” God damn. I could barely breathe.

“How should I know? What do you think he’s going to do with it?”

“How should I know?”

Mystic Eyes found her bat.

“Well, we need to go get him,” said Dingo.

“And what?” I asked.

“And kill him. Duh.”

“Dingo, you’re insane. This is all crazy.”

That was what I told him. But it was a lie, and I knew it. He wasn’t the one who was crazy. I was. I realized that now. That if anyone was the odd man out here, it was me. I was the stranger. The outsider. The one who didn’t get it and never had. It had always been this way. I was always the one on the outside. The one looking in.

As if to prove it, Dingo said, “This is what’s so messed up about you, Weasel. You just don’t get it. Why don’t you get it? Wonderbaby betrayed me. I can’t just let him go. Go around double crossing me like that.”

He eyed me like he was trying to suss something out, like he was looking for trouble. Like he was trying to figure out how much trouble I had in me. “You’ve been acting strange all night, Weasel,” he said. All I could think was seriously? I wanted to say the same thing to him. He continued: “You said you were on my side. You said.”

I just looked at him and spat. Something was mounting inside me, anger or confusion of something, or a mix of both. Hell, I couldn't tell what it was. All I knew is it felt terrible. Like a sneeze that gets stuck in your throat or a burp that you accidentally swallow at the last second. Everything was wrong and nothing would ever be right again.

That was how I felt at the time. But now I understand better. Now I know how dumb and ignorant I was. How I had never figured out what the rest of everyone else in the whole stupid world was born knowing. How I’d never been able to see anything for what it really was until it was too late for me. Or for Dingo or Wonderbaby. For Dog. Hell even for Mystic Eyes. For anyone. No wonder everyone hated me back then. No wonder everyone said my name, when they did say it, like they were spitting a bad taste off their tongue. No wonder things ended up like they did. I was barely even human, even before I turned into whatever the hell I am now.

Dingo stared at me. Then he clicked his mouth or whatever twice, like he was trying to giddyup a horse or I don’t know, and I guess it was some kind of signal because as soon as he did it Mystic Eyes charged at me, swinging her nail bat with death in her eyes. I just barely leaned away from her first swing in time, and then pulled myself from the rubble as fast as I could. I took off, running for my life. Mystic Eyes was right on my goddam ass, swinging like a lunatic. I heard her laughing. I heard Dingo laugh.

There was a paved embankment nearby that led up to where the bridge was. I scrambled up it to the street on all fours like a scared animal, brain pounding inside my searing skull. Mystic Eyes was coming up behind me but she was slow on the upturn cause she had to hold her bat. I thought I was home free till I saw Dingo, crouching in front of me, arms spread like he was ready to receive me. Somehow he had cut me off.

I made a sharp turn. He tried to pull me down the concrete slope, but I managed to get up to the street, topple over the sharp metal rail. I hit the sidewalk in a skid of blood and bunched flesh. I didn’t even have time to feel the pain. They were on me somehow. Both of them. Almost right on top of me. I had to run.

So I did. I kept running, pinballing through the night crowds. Dingo and Mystic Eyes were yelling behind me. I could hear Dingo, yelling how he was gonna kill me, how I betrayed him too, how they were gonna get me, how I wasn’t going to make it out of this in one piece.

Looking back, I don’t think they knew just how right they were.

At the time though, I didn’t think that. I didn’t think much of anything. All I could focus on as I ran, blood pounding, blood hot, on fire, going crazy, was how confused I was, how I didn’t understand anything that was happening tonight. Now I know why. It was because I had never actually looked at anyone before. Never actually, really looked someone hard in the eyes and saw who — what — was in there. If I had, I probably would have lost it a lot sooner. I was finally, for the first time in my life, being forced to see my friends, to see people, for who they really were.

On the inside.