Incelbordination, Chapter 9

When the Monday morning sunshine burst through his window, Oswald Crow contemplated taking the day off. He could tell Valerie Sand that he had come down with food poisoning or something. Then again, if he pulled that sneaky trick, the C- would become a D+ in no time at all. He wasn’t sick, but he’d have to take his medicine anyways. He pounded his fists into the pillow as he dragged himself out of bed to get ready for class. Why did Monday mornings have to exist in the first place, especially when Sunday mornings were days when Incelbordination “went to war”. The thought of their hate speech made Oswald feel as though he had worms crawling in his stomach.

What would be on his MP3 player today? Something to relax him? Something to hype him up? A band to share his sadness with? Nah, he didn’t feel like music today. He just put on his trench coat and fucked off to English class. With Incelbordination clouding every corner of his mind, he didn’t feel like he could concentrate on music. If that was the case, what made him think he could concentrate on schoolwork? Maybe he should have taken the day off and smoked a shit ton of weed. Eh, maybe not.

Oswald’s posture drooped over as he headed to class, barely paying attention to the sets of shoes around him. Some of the “Stacys” had worn sandals and shorts on this fine spring day, but he didn’t give a damn anymore, not after Valerie gave him shit about it this past Friday. Oh crap, he actually had to see her and had very little time to get there. He kept telling himself to turn around and take a personal day, but his zombie body pushed him forward nonetheless.

The only thing bombastic enough to awaken him was the sound of an explosion followed by van engines and young men screaming incoherent slogans about not getting laid. Oswald had just unknowingly stumbled upon a terrorist attack and watched in horror as masked men went around beating the shit out of other students. Some of them whipped “Stacys” with belts. Some of them punched “Chads” with brass knuckles. Those who were driving the vans mowed down both “Chads” and “Stacys” like human bowling pins, though the terrorists would clearly dispute the human part of that analogy.

“Oh no…Oh my fucking lord…” Oswald said to himself as he knelt down and held his head in his hands. He believed he was powerless to stop this madness even with his superior boxing skills. So many masked men…so many weapons…so many vans…and here was this dwarf just waiting to get his ass kicked or even worse. He believed wholeheartedly that he brought this upon himself. He should have told Detective Barry about this when he had the chance.

“Help!” shouted a terrified feminine voice muffled by a glass door. Oswald collected himself and noticed his one true crush Nikita Johnson banging on the glass door of his English class begging for a rescue. “Someone help me! Please!” she shouted over and over again.

One more dead Stacy doesn’t matter, an intrusive inner voice told Oswald. No. It does matter. It has to matter. This madness had to stop. Cracking his knuckles and both sides of his neck, Oswald bolted towards the glass door and shouted, “Nikita, hang on!” He rolled up his trench coat sleeves and started punching the shit out of the glass door. This was no doubt tough material that left his knuckles bleeding and his hands calloused. But one crack in the glass turned into two. Two turned into four. Just a few more pain wracking punches that sent shockwaves through his numbed out arm. And then the glass door shattered and Nikita was free.

Before she could taste freedom, a heavyset man wearing a black mask hand-gagged her  and pulled her backwards kicking and screaming. “Get your fucking mitts off of her, you sick prick!” shouted Oswald before punching the terrorist in the knee and buckling him. The dwarf ignored the pain now shooting up to his shoulders as he threw a few more heavy rights and lefts until the terrorist’s knee was completely blown out. Letting go of Nikita, the fat man collapsed to the ground crying like a bitch while Oswald’s hands bled some more.

Nikita leaned down and quickly examined the dwarf’s knuckles. She said, “Come on, let’s get you out of here! My car’s in the parking lot. Let’s go!” She gave Oswald a piggy-back ride and bolted out of the classroom, zig-zagging between various masked men pummeling their prey. Even in Birkenstocks, Nikita ran with the coordination of an athlete. Oswald had little time to admire her physicality as his knuckles bled all over her blue T-shirt. There were probably pieces of glass stuck in them.

Another heavyweight terrorist grabbed Nikita by her arm as she trashed and yelled, “Get your hands off of me, you pervert!” Not wanting to further injure his hands, Oswald leapt onto the jerk and head-butted him until blood soaked the man’s mask. The world around the dwarf seemed to spin like an amusement park ride after so many head strikes. Nikita had to pull him off the thug and piggy-back him some more.

The duo finally made it to Nikita’s car, though the angry voices behind them grew even more vicious the more she fumbled with her keys. She eventually found the right one, but was so jittery that she had trouble fitting it in the door. Another thug had jumped on top of the car wielding a crowbar and that was enough to knock both Nikita and Oswald backwards in fright. The thug chanted over and over again, “Love is black!” while raising his weapon in the air.

“Don’t hurt us! Leave us alone, you coward!” begged Nikita as she curled into the fetal position. The thug jumped down from the roof and raised his weapon like he was going to strike any second. Oswald was still fading in and out of clarity, but even with minimal equilibrium, he kicked the thug in the ankle and had him hopping up and down. After he dropped the crowbar, Oswald grabbed his other ankle and with one hard tug tripped him to the ground, making sure he hit his head on the roof.

Once the thug was KO’ed, Oswald struggled so much to help Nikita to her feet that he nearly blacked out. She hurried and fit the key in the door successfully this time before situating the dwarf in the passenger seat. He was so out of it that he didn’t bother to fasten his seatbelt. Nikita wasted no time in getting in the driver’s seat and getting the engine going, peeling out of there like a bat out of hell. She had to run over another thug in order to obtain a clear path to freedom, but she did and kept going.

“I need to take you to a hospital, you’re hurt!” sobbed Nikita.

“No! The hospital’s going to be backed up. Take me back to my dorm room. I’ve got medical shit we can use there. I just hope the cops can come in time to stop this BS.”

Oswald started to drift into darkness, but Nikita kept shaking his shoulder and saying, “Stay with me, little guy! This isn’t over yet! I’ll get you back to your dorm in no time at all!”

The dwarf’s speech began to slur as he talked nonsense for the rest of the ride to the dorm. “That C- is going to kill humanity…she’s going to steal the world’s pot and…”

“Oswald, what the hell are you talking about?!” No response. “Oswald, please wake up!” Still no response. “Oswald! No!” Nikita shook him harder and harder, but he still wouldn’t snap out of his concussion wonderland, if a concussion was what he indeed had. A psychiatrist might lean towards PTSD, a disease which got thrown around a lot on campus, but was completely justified this time around. What the dwarf would give for some pot right at that moment. Beautiful, mind-numbing, pain-dulling pot that made mundane clouds look like vanilla ice cream.

Nah, he couldn’t very well pull a ready roll out in this strange woman’s car. Come to think of it, even in his head-butt induced darkness, he seemed to remember her sharing an English assignment with the class about her straightedge beliefs. Maybe inviting her back to the dorm was a bad idea since that was where all of the magic medicine was kept. Then again, Oswald had nowhere else to go to, both to escape Incelbordination and to find permanence in life.

At this moment, Nikita Johnson was the closest thing to a godsend he had. Even though he was perfectly capable of sprinting long distances, she gave him a piggyback ride to safety after seeing his hands bleeding. Bloody hands weren’t unusual for a boxer at Oswald’s level, but never had it warranted a piggyback ride. Maybe the massive blood loss was making his mind go berserk. Then again, maybe it was the general loveliness of Nikita even though she was in hysterics. Before he finally drifted into the subconscious theater, Oswald had a tiny smile on his face knowing the two of them would finally be alone together.