Valentine's Day "Challenge" Piece
By Gemma

Ummm...I don't think anybody actually DID throw out a challenge, but JennaStan's piece got me thinking--never a good thing, as we all know. Here's the result.

Everybody belongs to Rysher and Tom except Egon Kobold, who I see as Seth Green.

Not like Vern Schillinger would ever put it that way--whole *word* just smacking far too much of Catholic bullcrap to smell OR swallow, let alone regurgitate--but to him, delivering the mail's not just a profession: It's a sacrament. Every (American) citizen's right, every (white) human being's basic privilege. And sure, he steams open and scans other people's private communiques on a daily basis, as a simple matter of course; that's his *job*, numb-nuts. But even someone as morally armored as Vern takes pride in making himself can't help but respond--just a little--to how shamefully naked his fellow prisoners' grinding, teasing need for simple person-to-person contact looks when spread out in an endless stream of badly-spelled words on paper. All that uninventive amateur pornography, the constant soap opera chorus of pleas and recriminations--all those vows of eternal devotion, probably penned halfway through the process of breakin' 'em...
     "Okay, here's how it goes," Vern tells the kid he's working with today--Kobold, right? E-gon. *Like in GHOSTBUSTERS.*
     (Uh HUH.)
     "Open the mail, check each page, use the pen you have to." The kid nods. "Anything with four letters in it, it's basically gone."
     "...like--book?"
     Vern gives him *the stare*, letting his eyes go all piggy-blank under knit no-brows--same one that usually works so well on every OTHER younger Aryan Brotherhood member who makes a habit of blurting out stuff too stupid to be worth a verbal response. And the kid just...keeps grinning, displaying braces: Soft-ass, no-spine, computer-jockey *freak*.
     Hair so white-blond it looks prematurely grey, giving Vern a second's weirdly sorrowful flash of Scott Ross; kid's similarly long and lanky, too, with skin like a map of Mars. Barely legal, and the little bastard took out almost a whole slum's worth of niggers, Spics, mogrels, etcetera by rerouting the firetrucks in five separate boroughs. News At Nine called him the "'Net Nazi" all through his trial, which broke fresh ground by being broadcast "live" on CourtTV's new website. Racked up something like a hundred five counts depraved indifference to human life; got him one of those crazy, setting-an-example-type sci-fi sentences, the kind where you're up for parole by the year 2525.
     So he hits Oz a celebrity, and the Brotherhood snaps him up the first day in, no questions asked or initiation required: So fuckin' what? genius-boy here STILL can't remember zip-codes worth shit--probably used to thinkin' in URLs--and he's a hyperactive, motor-mouth pain in the ass, to boot.
     That and the fact that he's always *looking* at me, Vern thinks. Then: Shit. Like I even care. About...much of anything.
     These--
     (post-Andy)
     --days, and all.
     Sitting eight hours a pop at the package scanner, squinting his good eye and trying to ignore the fuzzy blare of his bad one, courting a headache that throbs in all his face's remaining soft places; gritty mouth, scarily soft hum and blue light leak of the x-ray setting his bones buzzing. A passing parade of shadow-treasures, contraband and otherwise: Bags of cookies, hand-knit socks, favorite brands of toothpaste, condoms, crack-kernels, razorblades tucked deep into cans of shaving cream. And behind, on the sorting table, letter after letter full of red-hot fuck-talk for Vern and his minions to censor: Wives, girlfriends, *boy*friends. Shit so nasty that when he's through with 'em, most of the time, there's hardly anything left that's NOT black marker.
     And, just 'cause it's *today*...red pens. Pink paper. Hearts and fucking flowers. PerFUME, puffing up off the page as it opens, moist and gross as a girl drink drunk's breath.
     "oh baby just settin heer wearin my (GONE) thinkin bout yur sweet (GONE) member how we allus yuse to (GONE) how much I wan you to (GONE, GONE, EXTRA FUCKIN'--literally--*GONE*)"
     Vern snorts to himself. Mutters, under his breath: "*Valentine's* Day." Half-huff, half-snarl, like the word itself's some kind of--curse.
     And when you're alone, motherfucker...
     (it really IS)
     Not that *he* needs shit like that, anyway. Wouldn't give it a second look, he didn't HAVE to--inside here, or otherwise.
     (Never has, never will.)
     He's *above* all THAT stuff.
     (And just as well.)
     'Cause: The Old Man, he'd spit in an envelope sooner'n send his wayward youngest a scrap of handwritten familial support. And Hank--Heinrick Junior? Never could get his mind off of pussy or partying long enough to learn how to read anything more taxing than the latest issue of Hustler, or write anything wasn't aimed at Penthouse's letters section. Andy, now, with his altogether softer ways--he used to drop Vern a line or two, every once in a while...
     (*used* to)
     Huhhhh.

"'Net Nazi" Egon Kobold, meanwhile, struggles to keep himself dutifully busy sorting and filing and listening to Everlast on the handy-dandy auto-write-protect hard-drive inside his head--that thick Mick rasp, saddened and empowered by his own nihilism: *Think I'm gonNA diiie toDAAAAY...everyone who ever hurt me's gonNA PAY...*
     Anything to stop himself studying the bull-thick back of Vern's neck, in between letters --that faintly bluing White Power curlicue trailing down to where his spine divides his shoulderblades, same area the mail-room's self-elected Kaiser gives an impatient kind of wipe every time he comes to something he's not exactly sure how to classify. And wanting to be the one to sponge that sweat away, maybe with his tongue...or whatever Vern told him to do it with, really, if it ever seemed like the older man was even faintly in the mood to accept Egon's mute, too-horny-to-STAND-straight, teenaged homo hero-worship.
     *MaMA don't CRY, MaMA don't CRY, MaMA don't cry, you ain't done nothin' wrong...*
     Shivering at the thought, the image; knowing he's a moron to even let himself fantasize. That Schillinger, vague paternal gruffness aside, is too full of overwhelming rage and sadness to think about anything much right now besides getting even--too full of thoughts of his son's long-distance murderer, Em City's own Tobias Beecher--
     (lucky fucking prick)
     --to see what's in front of him, let alone what sits behind him every day, nursing an aching hard-on and admiring the way Vern's kick-boxed himself back into true Aryan warrior buffitude.
     Since the nature of Egon's crime was enough to get him into the A.B. without too many awkward questions, it's not like he's exactly *eager* to reveal himself as a card-carrying fag-boy, especially to the current object of his obsession (a guy who, if rumor speaks true, once personally nailed some child-molesting priest to the middle of the gym FLOOR--shit, talk about *harsh*, dude!). He likes being Nazi-identified, always has; the company's congenial, even out here in Gen Pop, and the tats they "made" him get were ones he was thinking of getting anyway--just never had the time, or the extra scratch.
     Nazis are cool. Even his mom thinks so, under all her "Can't we all just get along?" crap. He heard her once, confessing to LEWiss her creepy old Jew boyfriend how guHORgeous she thought Rafe Fiennes was in SCHINDLER'S LIST.
     *Do you think I'm BAD, Lewis? Does that make me EVIL?*
     And Lewis, voice dipping "seductively", in that uck-*adults*-having-SEX way: *Vhy ja, mein liebling--und ve haff VAYS uff punishing ze BAD little girls...*
     (Ewwww.)
     Vern Schillinger, though--Vern was just *extra*-cool. 'Cause, for one, he's REAL. And for two--
     --he's right over there. All day. Every day. Fucking *torturing* Egon with his calmly bad-ass presence.
     Almost every time his shift here is done with, Egon finds himself up in the Em City computer room, messing around on the 'Net--checking his 'mail, updating his backup site; sure, he's isn't supposed to have modem privileges anymore, but hacking out of Oz is so easy Egon doesn't even have to use most of his contraband toys to do it. Looking out through the glass wall, down on Beecher and his *new* Daddy, Chris Keller--yet another of Schillinger's exes--where they tend to hang in front of the TV bank with the rest of the "Others"...
     And God damn, but THEY're cool too, the both of 'em: Vern's got some serious eye, no mistake, scratched cornea or not. Keller's sleek, hard, barely-contained danger, a sexual punch lurking behind every motion...Beecher's cat-neat lawyer's poise and skanky, all-con cannibal grin...
     Don't have too much to offer compared to those two, do ya, geek? Egon asks himself, morosely. Like: *Oh, gee, Mr S...could I--set up a webpage for you, or something?*
     It'd taken all the courage he'd had to approach Beecher, just the other day, after yet another session with Sister Peter Marie (and man, SHE's spooky, even for a mud-hag--looks right through you, like she's using that not-to-impressed stare to turn you into a walking shopping-list of psychiatric ticks).
     "She put me down as a sociopath?" He'd asked, hopefully, leaning over Beecher's shoulder to squint at what he assumed must be his own file getting updated.
     Beecher raised cool blue eyes, not even bothering to close the document's window. "Nope," he said; "'moral imbecile', I think that was the phrase she used." Adding, with distain: "But if it's a *real big deal* to you, I guess I could suggest she reconsider."
     "Um...cool." A pause. "So, uh...you--and Schillinger--?"
     Sudden flash-spurt of blue flame, cool sliding to hot like matched gas under a Bunsen burner. And Beecher's voice squeezing flat, a sandpaper rasp. Replying, carefully--
     "Me and Schillinger *then*. Me and CHRIS, now. Me and anyone else--you included, if that's your angle--"
     --clicking his teeth, hard, white and SHARP--
     "--see under...Robeson."
     "Oh, no, no, that, um--no. I was just, uh..." Beecher raised his eyebrows, as Egon struggled to un-knot his tongue: "...wondering...if, you, uh, had any..."
     "Free drugs? Friends left in the bar association? Tips on how to get into Vern-baby's--"
     Egon flushed, bright red; Beecher drew a breath at the sight of it, edge-of-retch-quick.
     "Oh, you have GOT to be fucking kidding me, kid."
     "Um..."
     (...no?)
     Beecher slid his chair around to face Egon, who stood there heart in mouth, hands twisting together nervously. He hadn't felt so much like just another seventeen-year-old dork since his first day down at the county jail, when they'd made him take out all his piercings 'cause they kept setting off the stupid metal detector, then followed *that* humiliation up with a full-body strip-search.
     "So--you want to know how to turn Schillinger on, huh?" Beecher asked, almost conversationally. "Well, I'll tell you: Start out by pretending like you *don't* want him to bone you up the ass. You know--cry, scream, beg? Then do everything you can to get as far the fuck away from him as possible. Become what you've beheld. Make yourself a murd--a MAniac, just to make enough jizz to NOT be known as his prag anymore--and I guarantee, he'll be tied to your back for *life*, honey-bun. You'll never see the end of it, not while you're still alive..."
     ...or HE is.
     Egon nodded, slightly. Thinking:
     (Well, geez, dude: No need to boast.)
     "But since none of the above seems to be putting you off..." Beecher sighed, long and loud. "...here's my *real* advice. First, get yourself thrown out of Em City--and believe me, that's fairly easy; just beat up Bob Rebadow, or pick the right moment and moon McManus, or something. Then, once you're in Gen Pop proper, you get yourself into Vern's cell, make yourself...available, and--voila."
     Egon frowned. "Robeson's in with Vern."
     "Get him out."
     "Yeah. Right." A pause. "Um...how?"
     Beecher shrugged, turning back to his work. And snapping, as he did--
     "KILL him, dipshit."
     The implication, unspoken but obvious, even to an Oz-dumb newcomer like Egon: If it's *really* worth all that much to you. If you've REALLY got the balls to put your--
     (whatever)
     --where your--
     (whatEVER)
     --is.
     All of which, in the end, brings us right on back to doh-oh-oh-oh...back to the post office, to the sweaty back of Vern's neck, his bone-cracking thighs and bulging, lightning-bolted biceps. That lion-nose, half-flared against the constant mongrel stink of the bar-walled world around him; narrowed eyes paler than Beecher's own, washed clean and Racial Separatist Movement pin-up pure by years of walking what he talks, and then some.
     Rearing away from the scanner now, at last, and waving the biker across the way over to take his place--rolling his head from side to side to crack out the kinks, and joining Egon at the table. Demanding, in his usual knee-juddering growl--
     "KObold. You done with that last stack, or what?"
     "...almost."
     "Almost's for pussies. Give that fuckin' thing here."
     Egon passes him what's left of the pile, dry-mouthed; Vern flips through, totally oblivious to the hormonal upheaval his proximity's creating. Noting, half to himself: "Jesus, s'all for Em City. Rebadow--dried-up old fossil never got any from anyone, since back before they ran him through Old Sparky...Hill--nigger crip can't FEEL it, even when he does get it up..."
     Suddenly, Vern stops on the next-to-last letter, eyes glued to the return address. Ripping it expertly along the seam with one thumb, he pulls out the letter in question, scans it--then gives a grim, peeled-back smile, revealing an uneven line of bottom-jaw teeth.
     To Egon: "You already pass anything addressed to Beecher?"

The freak hands him a fresh envelope, struck blessedly silent; Vern shakes out the contents--some kinda P.I.'s report, looks like--and sticks 'em down the back of his pants, just under the retucked tail of his shirt. Replaces them with the letter he just read, slicks some glue across the flap, and tosses it onto the mail-truck: There. THAT oughtta sow a little discord in the *love* pod--shake up the blanket, see what falls out...
     (...and where it lands.)
     Happy Valentine's, sweetpea.
     Oh, and you too, Chrissie. Chris-to-pher.
     (You prag's fuckin' prag.)
     Vern's just grabbed the truck-handle and turned for the door, already anticipating Beecher's reaction, when the freak--*E*gon--blocks his way. Stammering: "Um..."
     "Fucking WHAT?"
     "...that's for, uh--Beecher?"
     "Gave me the damn letter, didn't you?"
     (Cupcake?)
     Kobold bites his lip, pockmarked face gone pinky-hot as the inside of some centrefold's snatch. "Then...it'll look better if *I* do it. Right?"
     (...riiiight.)
     Huh.
     Vern fixes Kobold, and is momentarily surprised--gratified, even, in some obscure way--to see the freak hold his stare, fighting hard to keep his own skittish eyes from darting away. Might be some kinda potential here, after all.
     So he lets go. Allowing--
     "Go on ahead, then, you really wanna."
     Which Kobold does, grin firmly back in place. *Glowing*.
     Man. Takes all fuckin' kinds, don't it?
     Vern shakes his head and bends back to work, not bothering to watch him leave.

Hours later, in the Beecher/Keller pod:
     "Hey, whatcha get?"
     "It's for you, actually. From some woman named--Kitty."
     Keller flushes. Hearing his own sly voice murmuring, in--last night's--memory:
     *Toby, baby...my pretty, pretty kitty-cat...*
     "Says here she really misses your 'slick velvet knob.'" Beecher looks up, eyebrow cocked: "*Man*. Now. THAT's romantic."
     "Yeah, Kitty--KATHerine. She's, uh--"
     "--one of your exes? I gathered." He passes it over: "Here."
     Keller  takes it, *double*-takes. Hoo. WHOO.
     (How the fuck'd *this* one get past--?)
     "You know," he says, "I betcha five bucks Vern sent this."
     "Yup."
     "To get you all--"
     "--jealous." Beecher shrugs. "Yeah. I know."
     (Man, completing each other's sentences and everything. Guess we really ARE fuckin' married.)
     "But...you're not. Jealous."
     Beecher shoots him that narrowed eye-flick, condescending to a fuckin' fault--ToBIas the Harvard-trained litigator, back in full force, with Chris the highschool dropout witness being pinned during cross-examination: Reeeally, Mr. Keller. As though you could allow such an uninformed ass-ump-tion to even cross your mind, let alone your tongue.
     Yeah, well: Considering where I've HAD my tongue--and how much you liked what I was doin' with it, at the time--I think I'll say any Goddamn thing I *want* to, "uninformed" or not. COUNSELLOR.
     (Bitchy little law-boy...*bitch*.)
     "If I thought I was going to lose you anytime soon, maybe," Beecher says. "But...how likely is that? I mean--"
     (--where are YOU gonna go, anyway?)
     Mr eighty-eight years, up for parole in *fifty*. As opposed to me with my fifteen, up for parole in four--same four's almost UP, right about now--
     (Yeah, well.)
     Unless...someone lets something slip, that is. Something you maybe might'a forgotten, now you got things just the way you want 'em; something you teased me with once upon a time, way back when all you thought about was seeing just how far you could stick it in and--
     (TWIST it)
     'Cause...a little pussy bitch like *you* could never hurt anyone, right? Not your best pal Keller, back behind the stacks in the library copy-room...and DEFINITELY not a big, strong man in uniform like C.O. Karl Metzger, in that storage closet near the Em City gate. Right, TOby?
     Looking at him now, close enough to touch in sturdy little body, but longer gone in mind with every fuckin' day they spend "together".  Makes Chris feels the way VERN must've, back when: Knowing he *has* Beech, to all intents and purposes--skin and bone, coil and scratch and claw, every dull gold hair of him, every secret, blood-full, nerve-lined part. And knowing even his all-access pass won't ever get him into the places that really matter; that all the climaxes you can wring from Beecher won't make him TRUST you any better, in the long run, and what you thought was true Muslim forgiveness was just another struck pose, another under-the-covers bargain. Tits for tat, like O'Reilly always says: Grist for the mill, an addiction to keep all the other--less controllable--addictions at bay, to keep Toby-baby all clean and sweet-smelling for his date with early release...
     But: All that's for another--not too far-off--day.
     Here and now, meanwhile, Keller gives a smooth, dark grin. And fills in the gap, yet again, before Beecher even gets a chance to.
     "Sure," he says, amicably. "Where AM I gonna go? Nowhere fast, *that*'s for damn sure."
     And you either, I get my way.
     (*Kitty*.)

At the same time, in the post office:
     Vern and Robeson, fresh from laundry, share a pre-mess chat while they wait for Egon --who rounds the corner at a jog and slides the (almost) empty truck back into place next to Vern, barely missing Robeson's foot as he does.
     "*Watch* it, shit-for-brains!"
     "Sorry." To Vern, breathless: "Last one there's for, uh...you."
     Vern flips the letter over, suspiciously--outside postmark, same state. No return address. Too light to be a bomb.
     "Secret admirer?" Robeson suggests, fluttering his lashes. Vern rolls his eyes, and tears the letter open, revealing--
     --a...valentine?
     Shaky red heart traced on a piece of plain white paper: LOVE YOU inside, same shade, anonymous block-printed like a five-year-old with ransom note-writing expertise. Vern blinks at it--once, twice. It flutters across his bad lens, but doesn't go away.
     "Hey, kid," Robeson begins, to Egon. "You see who--"
     But: "Gotta go," Egon blurts, in return. And vanishes back towards Em City like a rabbit down a hole, hack on the door left swivelling in his wake: Yo, junior! You got a friggin' *job pass* to show me, or what?
     "Fuck's wrong with that guy, anyway?" Robeson asks, idly. "Elevator don't go all the way to the top?"
     "Goes to the top'a *something*," Vern mutters, eyes still on hus unwanted "prize".
     Robeson, genuinely interested: "Yeah? What?"
     (Oh, for FUCK's sake.)
     "Just shut the fuck UP, Jim," Vern snaps. And stomps away, before his cellmate even has time to protest, tossing the crumpled-up valentine into the first trash-can he spots.

That night, Egon lies with his nose to the glass, straining for a glimpse of Beecher and Keller doing their nightly thing over his folded arms while the Brother whose name he can never remember snores on below him. Remembering this brief conversation from the Others' camp, overheard as he mounted the steps the the computer room a few weeks earlier--
     Augustus Hill: "Man, you ain't have to share a tier with those two, yo--listen to 'em goin' at it all night, every night. 'S downright embarassin', you know what I'm sayin'?"
     Bob Rebadow: "I think it's cute."
     Agamemnon "The Mole" Busmalis, piping up from under the shadow of his hat: "It's a mortal sin, that stuff they do. That's what the Bible says."
     Rebadow, shrugging: "Well, God hasn't said anything to *me* about it."
     And that, as far as Egon could tell, was basically the end of THAT.
     Down in that half-slice of light from the guard-tower, meanwhile, Egon can only catch intermittent flashes of what's going on between the two halves of Em City's most notorious couple--sliding limbs, blurry movement. A white-knuckled hand on the side of the upper bunk, while shadows stir on the lower.
     Ears pricked helplessly for any hint of sound, Egon catches himself humping into the mattress beneath him, and turns over quickly; squeezes his legs together, and tries to clear his mind by thinking up ways to get Robeson killed--not personally, of course. He's never been real good at stuff like that, one way or another, and he doesn't want to have to start with a guy twice his size, even if he *does* only have half a dick.
     But to plot it out, piece by piece, a well-mounted campaign--a logic puzzle, logically solved...to see Robeson the same way he saw those mud-people he crisped, as Antiu, Farang, Auschlanders--"foreigners" blocking his view, keeping him from something he wants--
     Yeah. He can do that.
     Egon hugs the pillow to his crotch, and smiles a happy metal smile.
     It's been the best Valentine's Day EVER.

THE END

Courtship Rites