***
While Travis Langford was dangling from his own tow truck, Bill Shockley closed his doors and twisted his key in the lock on the back of the NAPA building. It was still forty-five minutes before time to close, but something was nagging at him. He couldn’t shake the thought of those liberal, faggoty queers spouting on about the terrible Bush government and about the need for more gun control. They were okay with letting the gays hump whoever they wished in the privacy of their own perfectly decorated homes. He despised the fucking homosexuals. He despised the goddamn democrats. He despised anyone who didn’t agree with God, guns and Ol’ Glory.
There was something worse, though. Bill Shockley had urges. Every time he saw a young boy—the way they walked by his shop in the summer with their shirts off or the way they leaned over those cars in his garage in the back, he got those urges. But Bill by God Shockley wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t a queer. A few of those boys had taken his money and done things for him. They’d swallowed his meat as well as any woman ever had and without any of the lip. But he wasn’t queer. He knew he was a man. He knew he was just satisfying his urges and what was wrong with asking for a little payback? What was wrong with accepting a little pleasure in exchange for use of his garage or buying a case of beer for a hard working young man?
“Nothing,” he said as he opened the walk-through door and entered. He closed it behind him.
No one knew, did they? None of his boys had talked. They had a pact. They’d shaken hands on it. They had been the ones sucking on him, hadn’t they? They were the queers. They wouldn’t tell anyone…but if they did. If anyone ever thought William G. Shockley, veteran of the war in Vietnam was a turd pusher…a cocksucker…
“Bah,” he said and swatted the idea away with his old arthritic hands. Still, the idea crawled along his spine like a centipede, one of the big juicy ones he’d seen in those jungles, looking for a ripe place to sink in its pincers and feed.
Then he heard them. A group of them.
Boys.
They were chanting.
“Faggot. Queer. Gay Bill lives here! Faggot. Queer. Gay Bill lives here!”
Their shadows moved across in front of the window on the walk-through door. Their chant grew louder.
“Shut up! Shut up or people will hear!” he shouted.
But they didn’t shut up. They grew louder and after each cry of Faggot. Queer. Gay Bill lives here, they slammed their fists against the bay door. Each BOOM rumbled his insides.
“Shut up!” he shouted. “I ain’t no queer. I ain’t no cocksucker!”
He scrambled to the back of the garage, wishing for an escape, but the only escape was through the chanting crowd. The big bay door and the walk-through were his only options.
BOOM. “Faggot. Queer. Gay Bill lives here!” BOOM.
“I ain’t queer! You motherfuckers shook on it! You promised. You’re the cocksuckers, not me!”
His hand found the Colt before he realized what it was. He’d palmed it and was holding it out at the end of his unsteady arms, aiming at the bay door. The gun was there for protection, not that he ever felt unsafe before that moment, but it was his goddamned right to bear it, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?
“Leave me be or I’ll put a hole through every last one of you cocksucking devils!” he shouted, still waving the gun. Its barrel pointed at the walk-through, then the bay door, then the walk-through. He saw their shadows dancing back and forth and he’d have sworn they were holding hands. Gay Bill lives here! BOOM. He cursed them and the centipede on his back grew more frantic, more intense in its search for that place on his spine. The juiciest place to bite.
BANG!
The weapon discharged peeling open a small hole in the metal of the bay door.
BANG! BANG! Two more holes.
Shafts of light came in through those holes, interrupted only by the bouncing shadows of the dancing boys outside. They chanted, holding hands and tormenting Bill, the faggoty queer.
“I ain’t no faggot!” he shouted, his heart racing, sweat pouring from his temples and his armpits. BANG! One more shot. That one shattered the window on the walk-through door. The chanting grew louder. Gay Bill lives here! BOOM went the hands on the bay door. It shook like a clap of thunder.
He smelled the brimstone and saw the yellow mist as it tumbled over the broken window frame and in through the three bullet holes in the bay door. He saw something else in the haze as well. A face. A grinning face with shark’s teeth. It was a demon. It was Fear.
“Yes,” it said. “Yesss.”
Bill looked into those goat-eyes and pointed the gun to his own head. With one last declaration, “I ain’t no faggot,” he pulled the trigger.
It was after 6:00 pm when the shot rang out. There were two rounds left in the 1911’s magazine. Bill by God Shockley’s body lay slumped against his workbench. The chanting had stopped, if it was ever there. Outside the garage, a young man who had been washing his car at the neighboring gas station/convenience center approached with caution. He was on his cell phone dialing 9-1-1.
“Yeah. I think I just heard some gun shots coming from the NAPA in Smithville?” he said…