All Dog Punchers Go to Hell

Mary McCray glossed over her roll call sheet one more time and shook her pudgy head at some of the names on her list. At least two or three of them were cops. Four of them were multi-level sex offenders. Others were attending sensitivity classes for the very first time. But one name on this list made her chuckle in disgust: Darren Stars, a rock icon with more privilege than any of his cop classmates. “Who in the hell calls himself Darren Stars?” Mary asked herself.

Steeling her nerves for the worst, she sighed and reached high to twist the doorknob to the classroom. Some of the “students” snickered at their obvious height advantage over Mary. They also had a sizable youth advantage since Miss McCray’s wrinkly skin and wavy gray hair gave away her age. She wore a green dress with a white apron over it, like she was about to bake cookies instead of teach a sensitivity class. In order to meet her students’ gazes, she had to crawl up on the teacher’s desk and sit on the edge, swinging her oversized feet as she did so.

These degenerates smiled with the kind of juvenility one would expect from a high school classroom, which was where this special training session took place. Mary checked the roll call sheet to make sure everyone was accounted for, but used it as an excuse to hide her face from these humiliating stares. Some of these men looked like they just did time in the pokey, all muscled, tattooed, and dressed in T-shirts, jeans, and sometimes tank tops.

It was Darren Stars who caught her eye (and her ire) the most. “Feet off the desk, Mr. Stars,” ordered Mary, to which the long-haired, leather jacket wearing rock star reluctantly complied.

Crossing her arms upon her lap, she was finally ready to greet these students with a stern gaze and a gruff voice. “My name is Mary McCray. I am a sensitivity counselor. You are all hardened criminals, which is why you’re here today. My job is to provide you all with the tools to do better deeds in this world. How you handle those tools is completely up to you. Some of you will succeed, most of you will end up back in prison.”

Mary pulled her thick rimmed glasses off and cleaned the lenses with her apron. “But for a small minority of you, prison was never a clear and present danger. Whether it’s because of your wealth, your celebrity status, or just the fact that you wield any kind of authority at all, your massive privilege has kept you out of trouble. But if you think your money is any good here, you’re sadly mistaken. I’m here to straighten you all out and nobody gets a free pass. Any questions?”

Darren Stars stood up and said, “Yeah, I’ve got one. How come your parents aren’t supervising you?” That earned a collective horse laugh from the rest of the classmates.

“Well, clearly your parents are even more irresponsible if they give you a goofy ass name like Darren Stars!” That earned an “ooohhh” from the crowd and the arrogant rock star sat down slowly in shame. “Actually, I’m glad you made yourself obvious, Mr. Stars, because our lesson for the day has a lot to do with why you’re here specifically. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you get busted at one of your shows for punching a traumatized fan’s guide dog?”

“Guide dog, my ass! That motherfucker was howling his head off while I was trying to sing a song. He was ruining a fun night of music for everyone.”

“Yes, because punching a defenseless animal is the only number one hit you can produce these days,” said Mary with a cross-armed glare. Another collective “ooo” reverberated off the classroom walls, not unlike Darren’s guitar during a show. “Personally, I would have locked you up right then and there. But since you’re such a big celebrity who needs coddling and swaddling, you ended up here instead. Well, I have just the curriculum for you and your socially elite friends.”

Mary leapt off the desk and pulled a TV remote that looked like a magic wand from her apron. With one click, a white projector screen lowered in front of the chalkboard. With another click, the lights went out. “Gentlemen…and Mr. Stars, I want you to have a look at something.”

Another click of the button projected a montage of animal cruelty onto the screen. Elephants in India were being punched repeatedly in order to get them to paint. Monkeys laid in wooden crates with shackles around their necks and ankles. A cat was being thrown into oncoming traffic down below from a highway pass. Teenagers were shooting BB guns at helpless ducks, injuring their wings and snapping their legs in half.

Mary grinned mischievously at her students as most of them shed tears over the graphic footage, but wouldn’t go into a full-on crying spell. “So…a lot of you ARE capable of having empathy for others. That’s a good sign. Channel that sadness into our lesson for the day. But first…here’s a little something for the edgy man-children in the back.”

Another click of her wand and this time footage of pit bull abuse flashed across the screen. Upper snouts were being dislodged with crowbars. Dogs fought each other and spread their guts all over a dirt floor. One precious pup was being strung up on a rope and made to exercise on a treadmill while pulling a ten pound dumbbell. Even more tears poured from the students’ eyes while some of them tried to look away from the footage.

Upon catching Darren yawning with an uncovered mouth, Mary paused the video, illuminated the room, and asked, “Am I boring you, Mr. Stars? Is this not extreme enough for your tastes?”

“Now that I think about it, Nickelback is more metal than this garbage. Fuck it, I’m out of here.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stars, but leaving is not an option!” barked Mary as her eyes and the eyes of her glaring students shined bright red. Every fiery eyeball locked upon Darren in an attempt to make the egomaniac feel somewhat smaller.

Instead he smirked and waved it all off. “I’ve had mushroom highs that were trippier than this. You ain’t fooling anybody, old lady.”

“I assure you, Mr. Stars, this is not a drug hallucination. Everything you see before you is as real as it gets. I repeat…everything you see before you!” Mary flashed an evil smile as she clicked her wand and neon-eyed warrior pit bulls leapt from the screen and growled at Darren. “Go ahead. Punch them. I dare you. If you do have the balls to do it, they’ll be quickly ripped from your pencil legs along with your thumb tack penis!”

No matter how violently the dogs barked, Darren wouldn’t budge. He laughed at them and said, “I really should get off the heroin.”

“I couldn’t agree more, Mr. Stars. Get him, my pretties. Have lunch!” bellowed Mary as the pit bulls rushed towards Darren and chewed on his flesh.

What happened to the rock star was not a trippy dream, but a waking nightmare. Mary folded her arms and grinned while the monstrous dogs chewed and clawed pieces of flesh and blood from Darren’s body. He screamed while gagging on his own life juices. He tried to throw punches and kicks to the rabid animals, but they just chewed harder and harder, as if it was their last meal before being starved to death in the dog fighting circuit. “If they send me more losers like this guy, I won’t have to ever go to PetSmart again,” Mary joked while being splashed with blood.

“Hey! What’s going on here?!” snapped an authoritative voice, prompting the magic to come to a grinding halt. The dogs disappeared in a puff of smoke, the brainwashed students had normal eyes again, but Darren was still bleeding from asshole to appetite. The voice belonged to a cop bursting into the room, a cop flanked by his uniformed partner and a chubby music executive in a fancy suit.

While the two cops held Mary at bay with their weapons, the executive rushed up to the bloody and battered Darren and said, “Oh my god…this is…I’m just…this is beautiful!”

“What?!” screeched Darren. “How is this beautiful? I’m bleeding to death because of that fucking bitch and her stupid dogs!”

“Hear me out, hear me out,” said the executive. “Rock music these days is all about blood and guts, right? Well, you’ve got the perfect imagery going on here. We can print promotional material for days, months, maybe even years. You are the quintessential badass of rock and roll with this bloody look. Let’s go back to the studio and get pictures of you. You’ll look like a million bucks on any CD cover!”

“Hold on a goddamn minute!” shouted Mary. “He’s not going anywhere until he finishes sensitivity training! He ain’t anywhere near a passing grade. I told him that celebrity privilege bullshit wasn’t going to fly here! Mr. Stars, sit back down and don’t leave the classroom until I say you can! Officers, back me up here! Tell him he’s no different from the rest!”

“…Yeah…about that…” The lead officer opened fire on the sorceress teacher and put several slugs in her head, bringing her sensitivity class and her life to a brutal end. If anybody asked, the cop could just lie his ass off and delete the contradictions in his story from his file. Mary McCray had all the magic in the world, but none of it could summon the power she needed to take on a corrupt system. Everybody had a price and everything was paid for, including a new tombstone for the dwarven teacher.