By Jeff Penalty
(A short story originally published on Skepchick.org)
As I approached Surly Amy’s apartment her door flew open
and spat out a well built, shaven-chested man wearing a leopard print thong. He
ran past me down the hallway, crying and clutching a crumpled up police
uniform. The word “SLUT” was scrawled on his abs and arms in red lipstick.
“Animals!” he shouted back towards the door. “You’re all
animals!”
I walked into the apartment and thankfully my reflexes
forced me to quickly duck. An empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label
smashed against the wall in a space previously occupied by my head. As I stood
up slowly, I was greeted by a familiar voice.
“Holy shit, it’s Jeff! Get in here you fucking asshole!”
It was Rebecca, America’s Skeptical Sweetheart, wearing her
signature horn-rimmed glasses and a white dress with little cherries all over
it. Rebecca runs Skepchick.org, one of my favorite science/skeptical thinking
blogs. I had once contributed a guest article to the site and had met Rebecca
on two previous occasions (once after a bar fight in Boston and once after a
hazy night in Vegas). When she and several of the other regular Skepchick.org
contributors descended on my home city of Los Angeles to celebrate the birthday
of one of their own, I jumped at Rebecca’s invite to join them for what she
described as a “modest little get-together.” I was giddy at the idea of finally
meeting some of these other brilliant, endearingly nerdy women whom I had only
known through their writing, their pen names, and their cute cartoon avatars.
Part of me would forever regret accepting that invitation.
Rebecca greeted me with a hug and squeezed my ass with both
hands. I looked over her shoulder at a scene of utter chaos. The carpet was
partially burned, various mathematical formulas were spray painted haphazardly
on the walls, and the TV had been smashed. It was probably for the best that I
had left my DVD box set of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos
in the car.
“Let me introduce you to everyone. That’s Surly Amy, it’s
her birthday!” Amy was eating fistfuls of chocolate cake with one hand and
giving herself her fourth teardrop tattoo with the other. She offered a verbal
greeting muffled by a mouthful of pastry and then offered a hand covered in
chocolate frosting. I opted for a fist bump over a full handshake for sanitary
reasons.
“And this is Maria, also known as Masala Skeptic.”
“Hey there,” Maria said cheerfully as she squatted over a
potted plant in the corner and gave it an asparagus-scented watering. Masala
Skeptic reminded me of a human version of a cartoon squirrel. Albeit a rabid
one that eschews underwear.
“And that’s Elyse and A.Real.Girl.”
Elyse said “Hi!” but couldn’t really wave with a bottle of
Everclear and a red funnel in her hands. A.Real.Girl waved but couldn’t really
speak with the other end of the beer bong in her mouth. Judging from their
facial scars and toned muscles, these two were clearly the “enforcers” of the
group. And somehow, Elyse’s all-black glass eye complemented A.Real.Girl’s
diamond-inlaid platinum grills perfectly.
“We’re about to hit the town,” Rebecca said, uncapping a new
bottle of Black Label. “You wanna come with?”
“Sure, where are–”
“WE’RE OUT, BITCHES!” Rebecca yelled on her way through the
door.
“Um, what about…this guy?” I asked, indicating the loose
rooster strutting around the kitchen. Surly Amy tore open a box of Lucky
Charms, dumped its contents onto the kitchen floor, and glared at me as she
walked out the door.
“Don’t forget the hanger!” Masala Skeptic called to Elyse,
who ducked into the hall closet and produced a standard wire hanger.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” A.Real.Girl slurred as she grabbed a handful
of my shirt and pulled me outside.
***
It was a busy Friday night on Hollywood boulevard, with
club-hoppers in rhinestone-speckled T-shirts and identical black mini dresses
littering the sidewalks. But Skepchicks apparently don’t bother with the
sidewalks: Rebecca led our group through a back alley and slipped a fifty to a
nervous busboy to gain us access to a brand new club co-owned by Ludacris and
Justin Timberlake.
I was expecting an evening of soda, snacks, and secular
humanism, but apparently the Skepchicks had a craving for synth loops, strobe
lights, and celebutantes. I was rather underdressed for the occasion; the dance
floor was a sea of designer labels and overpriced haircuts, I was in a hoodie
and jeans.
Elyse, A.Real.Girl, and Masala Skeptic carved a path to the
dance floor while Rebecca and Surly Amy elbowed their way to the bar. I cowered
by the men’s room, baffled by the disconnect between these girls’ cerebral
online personas and the unsettling reality. I was particularly taken aback when
I watched Rebecca lean over the bar and swipe a bottle of Bacardi 151 when the
bartenders weren’t looking.
I wondered why she needed a new bottle of booze when she was
still clutching her bottle of Scotch from the apartment. Rebecca indirectly
answered my question when she poured half a pint of the Bacardi into Surly
Amy’s mouth. Amy grabbed a tea light off the bar, held it in front of her lips,
and spat out the 151. The resulting fireball singed the hair of Kirsten Dunst
and engulfed the shirtsleeve of Mario Lopez, who stopped, dropped, and rolled
with a ballet dancer’s grace.
Security was on them in an instant.
I tried to intervene and calm the situation down, but the
other Skepchicks swooped in from the dance floor and it became a shouting and
shoving match that was way beyond my control. Our whole group was hustled out
the front door.
“Fuck it, come on!” Rebecca said, as she led the group down
the street to the next club. I was mentally composing excuses to break off from
the group and head home when a police cruiser pulled up next to us. Its siren
issued a short burst.
“Miss? You can’t have that bottle open on the street.”
“Excuse me?” Rebecca asked indignantly.
“You can’t have that bottle open on the street, drop it in
the trash or it’s a $400 fine.”
Rebecca looked the cop dead in the eye and took a long pull
of Johnnie Walker. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and quietly
said, “I dare you.”
The cop opened his car door and stepped out. POW! Masala
Skeptic flew in from nowhere with a hard right cross and knocked him out cold.
The Skepchicks all cheered as Elyse grabbed his gun and hat. A.Real.Girl took
the wheel. “Get in!” she yelled. The Skepchicks piled into the cruiser…and
pulled me in with them.
***
A.Real.Girl buzzed down the street, weaving through opposing
traffic and causing a symphony of honks and squealing brakes in our wake. When
my life stopped flashing before my eyes, we were in a seedy, deserted section
of Chinatown. We left the cop car parked halfway on the sidewalk and walked up
to the rear entrance of an abandoned tire warehouse. Amy pounded on the door,
leaving a chocolate imprint of her fist. The door opened only an inch.
“Password” said a serious voice with a heavy Mandarin
accent.
“Skepchick,” said Elyse, sticking her new police-issue Glock
22 through the crack. The door opened wider and the Skepchicks filed in past
the enormous bouncer.
We took a freight elevator to the basement and stepped out
into a smoky room filled with shouting Asian businessmen, Triad gangsters, and
the thick humidity of human sweat. At the center was a fighting cage made of
plywood and chicken wire, inside of which two neckless and bloodied men were
locked in bare-knuckle combat.
“All right, birthday girl,” said Masala Skeptic, “Get some!”
The other Skepchicks hooted as Amy walked down the aisle and posted herself
ringside.
“What’s she going to do?” I asked Rebecca naively.
“It’s a Skepchick birthday tradition. You’ll see. So what
have you been up to, anyway? It’s been forever since we’ve talked!”
“Oh, you know, same old, trying to keep busy…” I trailed
off, distracted by the sight of A.Real.Girl trading a wad of cash for a Ziploc
full of multicolored pills with an unsavory character near the back of the
room.
The fight bell rang and the competitors were carried out of
the ring. Surly Amy leapt into the cage and raised her hands victoriously over
her head. Her challenger would be a 6’7” Samoan man with arms the size of
redwoods and a tattoo of a gargoyle covering his shaved head. The Skepchicks
howled like rabid wolves. Amy didn’t need much encouragement though, as her
opponent’s nose was broken one second after the bell rang. Blood flowed from
his face like syrup out of a squeeze bottle as Amy worked his body. He landed a
punch or two, but it just made Amy laugh more maniacally each time. Finally she
went for the groin and then hocked a loogie on the back of her opponent’s head
when he was doubled over in pain. He responded with a perfect uppercut that
sent Amy reeling into the chicken wire.
Elyse tore down the aisle, kicked open the cage door, and
unloaded a flurry of fists on the Samoan. He was out cold after the third or
fourth strike, but she didn’t stop battering his eerily still body until Surly
Amy pulled her off. “My birthday, MY fight!” she reminded Elyse.
“Who the fuck are you talking to?” Elyse shot back,
punctuating the question with a backhanded slap. Amy laughed and then came back
at Elyse with a left hook. Elyse, also laughing, launched a fist into Amy’s
solar plexus. They traded punches one by one until the crowd started booing.
Several other fighters entered the ring to try and pull them apart and a melee
ensued. One of the Triad guys started firing a machine gun at the ceiling and
the place cleared out.
I followed the Skepchicks into a parking lot near the
building where A.Real.Girl was using the coat hanger to boost a souped-up Honda
Civic. “So that’s what the hanger was for,” I said.
“Not exactly,” Elyse said with a devilish grin.
A.Real.Girl hotwired the Civic as the Skepchicks piled
inside. I had the choice of either heading back towards the machine gun fire,
driving away in the stolen cop car, or going with them, so I took what I
thought would be the least dangerous option. I probably would’ve been better
off with either of the other two.
***
The Civic blazed through the side streets of East L.A.
“We’re so disappointed you never submitted for the calendar!” Rebecca said to
me.
“Well, I had this idea for a photo, but…um…where are we?”
A.Real.Girl slowed the car to a crawl as we entered an
intersection closed off by a huge multiethnic crowd encircling a fleet of
sleek, modified import vehicles. A scrawny Guatemalan teenager wearing an
oversized T-shirt featuring an airbrushed portrait of Tupac came to the window.
Rebecca threw him an impressively thick wad of 100-dollar bills and he waved us
through the crowd.
“Where did you get all that cash?” I asked.
“I got BLOG money, punk!” Rebecca shot back before taking
another gulp of Scotch.
“What was it for?”
Rebecca pointed out the windshield at a Mexican version of
Bettie Page holding a pair of black lace panties in the air. She dropped them
to the ground and A.Real.Girl hit the gas.
The Civic peeled out ahead of the pack and the Skepchicks
screeched louder than the tires. The speedometer shot past 50…60…80…110…we were
probably going faster but the numbers on the dash only went so high. Two cars
had fallen behind us, but two others stayed neck and neck. “Maria! Hanger!”
A.Real.Girl barked over the growl of the engine. Masala Skeptic crawled over
our laps and leaned out the rear driver’s side window. She straightened the
hanger out, but left the hook on the end intact.
“Get me closer!” Masala Skeptic yelled. A.Real.Girl inched
closer to the hot pink Mitsubishi Eclipse with the glowing undercarriage to her
left. Masala Skeptic shouted “Bottle!” Rebecca guzzled her last drops of Black
Label and handed over the empty. Masala Skeptic hurled the bottle at the front
passenger-side window of the Mitsubishi and shattered both with a surgical
strike. The driver looked over quickly but couldn’t afford to take his eyes off
the road for more than a millisecond.
Surly Amy held Masala Skeptic’s legs as she climbed further
out of the car. She extended the hook of the wire hanger through the
Mitsubishi’s now-open window. The driver tried to swat it away, but soon Masala
Skeptic had hooked the bottom of the Mitsubishi’s steering wheel. She yanked
the hanger towards her, turning the wheel violently to the left. The Mitsubishi
spun out and caught a tire. Its forward momentum caused it to flip four times
in the air before landing upside down, rolling several more times, and slamming
into a taco truck.
“So that’s what the hanger was for,” I said.
“Not exactly,” Surly Amy said in a sinister tone as she
pulled Masala Skeptic back into the vehicle. I have no idea if the driver of
the Mitsubishi or the taco truck employees survived.
The only car left was a hideous orange Acura Integra leading
by half a car length. “Ready girls?” A.Real.Girl asked as her thumb hovered
over a red button installed after market on the steering wheel.
“PUNCH IT!” the Skepchicks replied in unison.
She punched it. The Civic shot forth with a burst of nitrous
oxide. The Skepchicks’ cheers were deafening, but thankfully we were traveling
past the speed of sound at that point. The race was ours.
Until the explosion.
Either some fuel leaked into an intake valve or someone shot
a Revolutionary War cannon at our engine, but the end result was the same: the
hood popped off and angry flames enveloped the front of the car.
Everything seemed to go into slow motion. My heart was
pounding too hard for me to hear any outside noise, but I saw Rebecca’s lips
form the word “Bail!” A.Real.Girl hit the brakes and the car skidded for at
least two city blocks as the Skepchicks leapt out and rolled away. A hand
(maybe Surly Amy’s?) grabbed my collar and pulled me out of one of the doors
before my brain had time to process it all. When my senses returned, I saw
A.Real.Girl stepping out of the Civic and casually strolling back towards the
rest of us scattered about the asphalt. The flames finally hit the gas tank:
BOOM!!!
Of course, A.Real.Girl didn’t look back.
We dusted ourselves off and inspected the damage. A few
scrapes and bruises, and my Levi’s had an embarrassing tear just below one of
the rear pockets, but somehow, against all the laws of probability and physics,
we were alive.
Surly Amy produced a set of homemade brass knuckles shaped
like a Darwin fish from her side pocket and slid her fingers into them. “Let’s
go get our money back.” She started walking back toward the starting line when
the faint sound of helicopter blades became audible. Five seconds later we were
caught in the spotlight of the LAPD’s patrol chopper. The Skepchicks
instinctively scattered in different directions. In a panic, I followed Rebecca
as she dived into a sewer drain. We heard sirens and gunshots on the streets
above. Could’ve been the cops. Could’ve been Elyse finally putting that Glock
to use. I was glad I wasn’t in a position to know either way.
Rebecca pulled a butane lighter with a Pantera logo on it
out of her jacket pocket and did her best to light the way as we splashed
through sewer water and rat corpses.
“So, where are you living now? You moved to a new place,
right?” she asked casually.
“Yeah, it’s in Hollywood,” I managed to squeak out.
“Oh, right near Amy! I’ll give her your email address, you
guys should hang out more often.”
“Yeah, maybe” I offered, as non-committal as humanly
possible. “Do you know where we’re going?”
She smiled at me. “Skepchicks always have a rendezvous
point. So are you still doing music?”
***
It was a journey filled with half a dozen rodent bites, a
million cockroaches, and a thousand horrible stenches. I think fear of reprisal
from Rebecca was the only thing that kept me from crying and/or vomiting.
Finally, we popped open a manhole in a part of town I didn’t even recognize.
The rest of the Skepchicks were waiting by an ornate set of wrought iron gates
that guarded the entrance to a Jewish cemetery. None of the girls had any
bullet wounds, but Masala Skeptic seemed to have somehow lost one of her high
heels and gained a canister of LAPD pepper spray. I didn’t ask.
I feigned a yawn. “Wow, it’s really getting late…we should
probably—” The whole group shot me a look that stopped my vocal cords in their
tracks.
“Maria, you still have the hanger?” Elyse asked. Like an
X-rated sword swallower, Masala Skeptic slowly slid the elongated wire from its
hiding spot between her cleavage. She handed it to Elyse who used it to pick
the massive, ancient lock of the cemetery gates.
“Let me guess: this is still ‘not exactly’ why we brought
the hanger?”
A.Real.Girl pinched my cheek just a little harder than she
had to. “You catch on quick.”
The gates creaked open and we crept inside. I wasn’t too
fond of adding B&E to the list of the night’s inevitable charges, but at
least the quiet of the cemetery was a welcome change of pace. We snaked between
gravestones and mausoleums until finally Surly Amy held up her fist like a
platoon leader, signaling the rest of us to stop. “Right here,” she said.
“Fancy headstone. Fresh grass.” Masala Skeptic and A.Real.Girl split off from
the group, the rest of us circled around a grave with a shiny, ostentatious
headstone that read SCHULLER in bold block letters.
“We should probably get out of here,” I whispered to
Rebecca.
“What are you afraid of, ghosts?” Her response got a solid
laugh out of Elyse and Amy.
“No: Skepchicks,” I thought silently to myself.
At that point, Masala Skeptic and A.Real.Girl returned. With
shovels.
“No way!” I hissed. Surly Amy took one of the shovels from
A.Real.Girl and shoved it into my hands.
“Dig, motherfucker,” she insisted.
***
It took at least 2 hours before Elyse’s shovel finally
clinked against the lid of Mrs. Schuller’s coffin. Surly Amy cracked it open
and I pulled the collar of my shirt up over my nose to guard against the putrid
smell. Opening a casket to discover a moldy skeleton would have been far
preferable to seeing a freshman resident like Mrs. Schuller, with her skin
receding from her fingernail beds and her cheeks melting away from her jaw.
The Skepchicks, however, were unfazed. Masala Skeptic let
out an “Ooh!” in a voice that would have otherwise been adorable, if she hadn’t
been brushing maggots off of a dead woman’s hand to steal her 4-karat diamond
wedding ring. “Happy birthday, Amy!” she said as she handed Surly Amy the ring
as a gift.
“Aw, thanks Maria!” Amy cooed as they embraced. Elyse,
meanwhile, was pulling the rings off Mrs. Schuller’s other hand while Rebecca
concerned herself with liberating a large teardrop-shaped amethyst pendant from
around Mrs. Schuller’s neck.
“We really should
get out of here, guys.” I pleaded. “We’ve pushed our luck pretty far for one
night.”
“You’re right,” said Rebecca. I was relieved. It was finally
over. “You really proved yourself, Jeff. Tonight, you became one of us.”
“Thank you,” I said, unsure of the consequences of accepting
such a compliment.
“We want to induct you as an official Skepchick.”
“Okay. Great.” Anything to get us out of there faster.
“Grab him.”
Elyse and A.Real.Girl grabbed each of my arms. I tried to
struggle free, but Masala Skeptic dosed me with pepper spray and my knees
buckled. When my eyes opened, I was six inches away from an eager worm
burrowing itself under Mrs. Schuller’s eyelid. Rebecca was behind me with the wire
hanger, bending the hook end into an “S” shape. Surly Amy worked her fingers
into the tear at the bottom of my back pants pocket and with one swift pull she
created a flap to expose my entire right ass cheek.
“You wanted to know what the hanger was for…” Rebecca said
coyly. She clicked her Pantera lighter on and slowly ran the butane flame over
the wire S.
“No! NO!!!” I screamed. But that was met with another spritz
of Masala Skeptic’s pepper spray.
“Shhhhh…” she whispered sadistically.
And then there was that trademark sizzle of hot metal
meeting flesh. Rebecca held the brand in place for the longest eight seconds of
my life. I tasted blood in my mouth from biting my lip so hard to prevent
myself from screaming. I felt urine running down my leg and stinging the fresh
scrapes from jumping out of that car. And then I passed out.
***
I woke up strewn over a toilet in a truck stop bathroom on
Highway 15 around 7 a.m. the next morning. The Skepchicks had taken my shirt,
shoes, wallet, and phone but had mercifully left me my tattered, piss-stained
jeans. Sore and exhausted, I panhandled at the gas pumps until I had enough
change to buy a pair of flip-flops and a “No Lot Lizards!” T-shirt. I did my
best to ignore the stares of the other truck stop patrons during the purchase,
but the clerk’s eyes were boring a hole through me the whole time. When he
handed me my receipt, he said “Son…?” and pointed to his right cheek. I
inspected my reflection in some mirrored sunglasses on a display rack by the
register. There was a huge penis drawn on my face in bright red lipstick.
Thanks for that one, Elyse.
Covered in dirt, blood, urine, sewer water, smeared
lipstick, and the unmistakable mustiness of death it took me all day to
hitchhike back to Hollywood via a lazy-eyed trucker who vastly misinterpreted
my awkward way of sitting and a Mormon youth group that kicked me out of their
van when they saw what they thought was the “mark of Satan” on my butt. (To be
honest, though, listening to them sing “Come, Come, Ye Saints” over and over
again was probably the most painful part of the whole ordeal anyway.)
I didn’t want to knock on Surly Amy’s apartment door ever
again, but the Skepchicks either had my keys or at least had some information
about where they might be.
“Hey, you made it back!” Amy said as she opened the door.
“Come on in.”
“No thank you. I would just like my keys back please.”
“Oh, don’t be like that. We’re having a fondue party!”
“Fondue?”
That sounded much more like the innocent, science-loving
bloggers I thought I knew. Had I misjudged them? Was the previous night all
some sort of dream? It seemed pretty hard to believe when I thought about it.
Then that rooster started pecking at my shoelaces. It was no
dream.
Amy opened the door wider and a chorus of “Jeff!”s greeted
me. The Skepchicks were circled ceremoniously around Amy’s coffee table.
Rebecca was at the center, fluffing up a pile of Colombian marching powder that
would’ve made Scarface blush.
“I thought this was a fondue party,” I said.
“Cocaine!” Rebecca replied cheerily. “We’re ‘fond’ of
‘do’-ing it!”
The Skepchicks went into hysterics. I went to Home Depot to
get new keys made.
A few days later I was massaging Neosporin onto my new
least-favorite part of my ass when my phone buzzed with a text message from
Rebecca:
Hey! Gr8 catching up w
you other nite! How far u from san diego? Mxicn border guards no sense of
humor. Need $$!
I blocked the number and locked my door.