Let It Go (03-08-2012)

Bobby and Anti-Bobby made their way up to the barbed-wire fence, looking in on the desolate camp on the other side. A decrepit, gray roller coaster swung around on rusted wheels, sparks flying from it as the empty cars whipped around. A ferris wheel stood high above everything else, the cobwebs on it so thick that it looked like torn sheets hanging from the tarnished steel.

Anti-Bobby looked at his counterpart. “Well, this is it.”

Bobby scratched at the back of his hair. “Guess so.”

Bobby pulled a ouija board from out of his pack, setting it down on the ground. He pulled a long ceremonial knife out, checking the blade for sharpness. After that came a huge plastic bag, a bored-looking accountant sitting inside, typing away at a calculator. He set them all on the ground.

“You sure we can’t keep him?”

Bobby shook his head. “He’s the unbound spirit of violent murder, the very essence of carnage itself. As cute as he is, he belongs in the wild, where he can kill innocent people as much as he wants. He’s not supposed to be eating store-bought innocents, but rather feeding on the people walking home alone in bad neighborhoods.”

Anti-Bobby sighed, picking up the knife. “I guess so.”

He stabbed the accountant in the face twenty-three times, just like he had the first night he’d accidentally stumbled upon the spirit of murder. It only took a few moments before a cloying cloud of sticky smoke bubbled up from the ouija board, coalescing in the form of a ravenous dog’s head.

“Who dares call me from my torture chambers?”

Anti-Bobby stepped forward, reaching up to scratch behind the giant dog’s head. The beast began to growl, blood spraying out form between its teeth.

Bobby made soothing sounds. “There’s a good boy. Good boy.”

Bobby reached for the collar around the creature’s neck. Its links were made of huge bones carved in the shape of faces turned up in screams of despair. The cruel look on the beast’s face began to fade as he realized what the boys were doing.

“The Binding of Sorrow! Release me from it, so that I might be free as I was before man was born.”

Anti-Bobby grabbed both sides of the giant face, tears in his eyes. “Oh, I can’t do it. You’re the best pet a boy could ever have, and I’ll never let you go!”

The beast roared. “How much suffering do I have to heap upon you to show you that I’m not your pet? I crushed your family under tons of concrete, fed your girlfriend to a gorilla, taped over all your vhs episodes of MASH with infomercials,and  launched your home town into space! How much more pain do you need?”

Bobby undid the first latch, hearing a sound like a faraway scream. “Now Anti-Bobby, you’ve got to let him go. I already told you why.”

Anti-Bobby petted the Avatar of Violence. “You don’t mind the victims we get for you, do you boy? Why don’t we go back home and throw that crackhead around the yard again? Wouldn’t that be fun, boy? Huh?”

The beast wanted to be angry, but soon found his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. It did sound like a pretty good time, he had to admit.

“Now Anti-Bobby, how are we going to find a crackhead out here? The old boy has already bathed most of the country in undying flames, and eaten a lot of the rest of it.”

Anti-Bobby smiled up at him, arms wrapped around the beast’s neck. “It doesn’t have to be a crackhead. We can pretend we’re missionaries and get someone from one of those countries filled with starving people. Oh, come on.”

Bobby scratched at his chin as he was drawn into the beast’s mouth, the spirit of murder swallowing him in one slow gulp. He stumbled a bit as he fell down into one of the creature’s thousand stomachs, but then smiled.

“Well, all right, I guess we can keep him.”

He didn’t hear Anti-Bobby’s reply, as the sound of bubbling stomach acid showering over him drowned everything else out.