Death Race against the Anti-Shriners

[jack_babalon]

Brother Ezekiel Gray- Most Worshipful Master of the Hunt & Prince of the Western Gates


Ezekiel Gray lights up a Freudian Cigar that smells like fresh soil & tears. Two tokes in and he's already cough-barking up blood & phlegm into a wad of crumbled up hundred dollar bills he keeps under his fez. He spits up a chunk of lung meat right at my feet and wipes the red speckled drool from his chin and looks up at me like I just appeared there.
"You think you can take me boy? Is that what 'choo think?" He leans back into the seat of his minature 1963 Ford Mustang, savoring the cancer roll of smoke down his charred lungs. He smiles like a diseased rat and his eyes go milky as he gazes off at some distant memory sitting on the horizon of his senility.
"I was only 14 when I killed my first man. I stood on my daddys skull and drowned him face down in a puddle of mud. I watched him kick and twist and buck like a wild animal, and it was then that I knew what it was I am..."
He coughs up some more pink, growling under each cough. He hands me his cigar, the tip dripping with spit like a dogs chew toy, and pulls out his gold capped fake teeth. He prys a unindentified piece of his body from the gums, sniffs it and then wipes it on the side of the car. He snaps his fingers at me indicating to give him back his cigar.
"Now here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna give you a head start. That fancy bi-sickle of yours looks pretty quick and for your sake boy you better hope it is...'cause in ten minutes we're a gonna be a comin' and a comin' hard... like hellhounds boy. Have you ever heard hellhounds baying for your soul?"
"Sh'yeah" I say with a shrug
"Oh" Ezekiel looks at the other twelve riders in his pack. Old men in turbo souped mini cars. The dreaded Anti-Shriners of East Side Terminus, once upon a time, way back in Atomic Age Atlanta they were scourge of the South. Sipping cocktails and chasing down the poor & criminally insane for sport. Of course they laid low, in fact no ones heard from them in the last twelve years and by the time I moved here I chalked them up to urban legends. It's not the first thing i've been completely wrong about, lets hope it ain't the last. Ezekiel reaches between his legs and pulls up a wooden Tiki Mask the size of his torso, he puts it on and adjusts his fez- red with an upside down "?" on it. A seedy looking clown sitting on the curb reading the sports page gets up, with a lot of gasping and wheezing and wobbles over to me & the 13 Anti-Shriners, who now have all adorned Tiki Face masks on. The Clown pulls out an old Navy colt .45, holds it up in the air and fires.
"Now what?" I ask once the echo of the shot stops ringing in my ears.
"Whaddya think? Ya run kid..." The clown says with a shrug, the Anti Shriners at this point all rev up their motors in concert.
"Ten minutes huh?" I hop on my bike and quickly swipe the fez off Ezekiel's head. "C'mon and get me then mother fuckers!!!!" and I tear ass down the hill, racing for my life and waving the fez high in the air like. Behind me I can hear a mexican trumpet playing, and the squealing of tires. 'What the hell' I tell myself as the wind splashes life across my face 'can't be worse than the hellhounds'.


Shriners
Josh Agle
© 2003