Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (always you kirsty moseley .txt) 📗

the top of his lungs, Elgart is bumping into kids, alarming mothers and babysitters, and just generally acting like a lunatic, drunkenly holding his head as though it might explode at any minute. “NOT READY!—NOT READY!—NOT READY!”

“Fucking idiot,” Oswald mutters under his breath as he turns and hurries down a winding cement staircase, the risers slimy and puddled here and there. On his way down, he feels his nine-millimeter slipping out of his shorts, so he starts to shove the Glock back down inside his belt, when he senses commotion behind him.

He throws a quick glance over his shoulder at the emergency exit.

Two security guards are slamming through the adjoining emergency doors with an odd mixture of anger and exasperation, like parents awakened in the middle of the night by a bed-wetting child. Pausing on the threshold, they quickly survey the park. They look as though they’ve dealt with their fair share of stuff like this—gamblers melting down, angry spouses, drunks on a tear—but nowadays they have to be ready for anything. They have not drawn their guns yet, but they look as though they’re capable of it. Elgart’s shrill voice grabs their attention.

One of the guards—the younger of the two, a Mediterranean kid with a pompadour hairdo—points off at the snack bar, and the other one nods.

All of this occurs over the space of just a few seconds, as Oswald descends the staircase, but it’s enough time for him to hit a slippery patch on the bottom step, not looking where he’s going. All at once he loses his balance. His Reeboks slide out from under him, and he goes careening onto his ass.

The Glock pops out of his camo-shorts like a cork from a bottle.

The gun makes enough noise—clattering across the puddles on the deck—to get noticed by several patrons, as well as the two guards. It comes to rest near a fiberglass model of a circus clown spitting water into the baby pool, and there’s a sudden collective lull—a sort of group inhalation of air—as people stare at the thing.

A heavyset man in baggy swim-trunks practically chokes on his bratwurst as he stares at the weapon. “Holy crap, is that fake?” he mumbles with his mouth full. “Tell me that’s a squirt gun!”

Somewhere nearby, a woman screams high opera for her child to get out of the pool.

One of the concession-stand workers yanks their metal accordion-door down over their window, abruptly closing up like a turtle pulling into it shell.

“HEY!”

The voice of the olive-skinned guard rings out across the wet stairs.

“YOU! IN THE PINK!”

Oswald struggles to his feet as pandemonium breaks out around him. Screams erupt, and people scurry and slip and call out for family members. Kids are clawing their way out of the pool, crabbing toward their parents. Teenagers are scrambling under their picnic tables as if an air raid is in progress.

The guards have drawn their handguns now and are waving everybody back. They come hustling down the steps toward Oswald, who is stumbling toward his Glock, dizzy and disoriented, blinking away the panic and the pain shooting up his lower spine from the fall.

Meanwhile, Elgart is halfway across the pool area now, having a full-blown nervous breakdown, giggling and crying hysterically. He staggers toward an enclosed staircase at the base of the massive Pirates-of-the-Caribbean Thrill Slide. His garbled cries and manic laughter are drowned by the riotous noise of others.

He slips inside the enclosure and starts climbing up the waterslide’s steps.

A warning shot rings out behind Oswald.

Oswald flinches, and then ducks down. He scoops up the Glock. He’s got a full mag in the gun, and he snaps the slide as he straightens back up. Then he starts stumbling along the edge of the pool toward the big slide, ignoring the warnings.

“DROP THE GUN NOW, ASSHOLE, AND HIT THE DECK NOW OR WE WILL TAKE YOU OUT!!”

Oswald charges toward the base of the Pirates-of-the-Caribbean slide.

Less than forty feet to go.

Thirty.

Twenty.

Then, all at once, without warning, without logic, without any relationship to the laws of physics, a massive object lands on Oswald’s back as though a dump truck has just deposited about a ton of wet sand on him.

Oswald Means has never enjoyed Olympian strength, although his weight and girth have given him impressive might in terms of pure inertia. He pushed a car out of a snowdrift once simply by leaning on it. On another occasion, fueled by whiskey and amphetamines, he hurled an air conditioner through a second-story window. With his Sequoia-thick legs and ham-hock arms, he can pretty much lift small planets.

All of which is why he now manages to stay on his feet, and keep moving, even after the obese woman in the leopard-skin bikini has vaulted onto his back. “COLUMBINE! COLUMBINE! COLUMBINE!” she shrieks in his ear.

The nasally voice bellowing out of the fat lady nearly shatters Oswald’s eardrums as he staggers along under the yoke of her weight. She has platinum-blonde hair and double-chins and, above her ample derriere, a tattoo that says “Jesus is Just All right”—and she keeps screaming—“COLUMBINE! COLUMBINE! COLUMBINE! COLUMBINE!”

Oswald weaves to the left and then to the right, and then nearly topples over, but, with the lady on his back, somehow manages to stay on course toward the big slide. All around the park, people are frantically taking cover, the guards going down into kneeling positions, their guns raised, their trigger fingers paralyzed for fear they’ll hit the fat gal.

“COLUMBINE!—COLUMBIIIIIIIIINE!!” The portly gal keeps screaming and holding on to Oswald like a gargantuan tree monkey, digging her huge fake nails into his pectorals as he barrels closer and closer to the base of the slide.

“Sorry about this, ma’am,” Oswald grunts through clenched teeth as he lumbers around the edge of the wading pool and throws the lady off.

The woman does an awkward pirouette in midair, and then belly-flops into the shallow water.

The splash recalls the early days of NASA when the Apollo command module plunged down into the azure Atlantic, the image broadcast