The ride up to the cabin was frustrating. Neither O’Shea nor Adams knew much about music, but both were sound system enthusiasts. Their cars were equipped with gigantic, earthshattering subwoofers that comprised the entirety of their backseats and functioned primarily as shiatsu massagers. I was seriously considering a leap from the window when some action finally came.

A car drove up, filled to the gills with frat boys, all simultaneously flipping us the bird. In retaliation, I pulled my pants down and spread the cheeks to stare them down with my brown eye. Our car began to shake. They were throwing soda cans at us, full ones at that.

The cans exploded on O’Shea’s hood and splattered all over his window. One nailed me in the rear and sent my head into O’Shea’s lap. “Get the fuck off me, you faggotty-ass son of a bitch” he screamed and pulled me up by the hair.

O’Shea grabbed his walkie and dialed Adams, who was coming up behind us in his Honda. Riding shotgun was our buddy Putin, his girlfriend, and the rest of our beer. It was a tight fit.

“Yo Adams,” O’Shea shouted, “you still got that EMT rig in your car?”

“Sure do,” he said.

“Good, then why don’t you drive up behind these douche bags and give ‘em a good scare?”

Adams laughed and flipped on the blue lights suction-cupped to his dashboard. The frat guys panicked and pulled over without skipping a beat.

I sat there quietly as O’Shea hustled up a handful of quarters from his glove compartment and stuffed them into a tube sock. I started to see where he was going with this, but before I could say anything, Adams tapped me on the shoulder with a baseball bat.

I’d never seen him wear a grin so wide.

Once again, my mouth started to form words when Putin rolled up with Adams’ 12 gauge. It wasn’t loaded yet, but the frat guys didn’t know that. I was too shocked to speak.

“ON THE FUCKING GROUND!” Putin screamed, pointing the nozzle at their driver.

The brothers did as they were told, welcoming a series of wicked, full-body thrashings with nothing more than a heartfelt plea for their lives. It was too much for me. I stood at the side of the road and felt the lining dislodge from my stomach. Those frat guys deserved a lesson, but this was ridiculous.

“Come on, let’s get out of here!” I moaned, climbing weakly into O’Shea’s passenger seat.

“Hold it,” he screamed back, pulling out a knife and running it through the other car’s tires.

“Don’t worry,” Adams laughed, “I’m sure mommy and daddy’ll cover this like they do everything else.”

When we finally left, there wasn’t anyone else on the road for miles.

At the cabin there was a Labrador Retriever sitting on the front steps wagging its tail. He started to get up and do a little dance for us as we approached. Half step forward, half step back, half step forward, half step back, tail spinning round all the while like a propeller.

“You didn’t tell me you had a dog” I said.

“I don’t” O’Shea replied, then, turning to the mutt, he said “Get out of here Morris!”

The dog stopped dancing, tail quickly finding its way back between his hind legs, and his head fell dejectedly to the ground. For the briefest of seconds he ventured a glance back up at O’Shea, but was met with such hate that he took off running.

“How did you know his name?” I asked.

“You look like you could use a drink” he replied, and threw me a can.

“You bring your sleeping bag?” Adams asked.

“No, should I?”

“You’ll see” Putin laughed.

The door was opened and we entered into a cozy, well furnished log cabin. There were no bedrooms, but the kitchen was enormous.

“This should be alright.” I said, “Maybe a little tight, but not bad.”

“This ain’t where we’re sleeping.” O’Shea chuckled, opening another door at the far end of the hallway.

This led to an unfinished two story renovation. The project had been dropped without adding a roof or insulation to the empty floors. Through the skeletal roof beams I could see rain clouds forming.

“Great, isn’t it?” Putin joked.

“Are you kidding?!” I cried out, “we’re going to fucking FREEZE!”

“Not if we get good and drunk” O’Shea replied, wheeling out the Keg.

“Don’t worry baby, I’ll keep you warm” said Putin’s girlfriend Galatea, who was hanging off his arm like an overgrown shopping bag.

The guy cheated on her left and right, recently going so far as to break her arm in three places, but still she kept coming back. All his girlfriends were like that; convinced they were the only ones he cared about and willing to kill each other to prove it. Galatea wasn’t the girl he loved, but she was able to hold on longer than the rest. In return, all she got was more degradation and cruelty.

Since Putin switched girls more often than a square dancer, it was hard for me to remember names. Galatea was unmistakable though. She may have looked, dressed, and gesticulated like all the rest, but behind that style was a world-weary face that no amount of black eyeliner could cover up.

You could see it in the way her lips never fully curved at the ends when she smiled, or the glassy stare she gave when pretending not to notice Putin fiddling around with another girl. Galatea had the look of someone who knew deep down she was unwanted.

I woke up the next morning without a hangover and figured it must’ve been my lucky day. It wasn’t. The alcohol poisoning would set in a few hours later over a pre-breakfast game of “Kings.”

“You dumb shit,” O’Shea cried out, “You’ve got to draw the seven card if you want to go to the bathroom!”

“Fine, I lose,” I said, “Just let me go.”

“Not until you finish your beer.”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea . . .”

“Tough, you poured it, now drink it, bitch!”

I started to walk away but felt the barrel of the shotgun press against the small of my back. It wasn’t loaded, but the threat was still there.

I snatched the cup from the table and downed it as fast as I could. Before it left my hands, my sight went dim and vomit started streaming from my mouth.

“You better clean that up!” I heard as I crawled to the bathroom.

I awoke to a shotgun blast from the other side of the window. O’Shea was standing outside holding his rifle in the air.

“Hey shithead,” he said, “Wake up, some of us need to use the toilet!” Then, as if on cue, a loud series of knocks were made on the bathroom door.

“Did you just fire that gun into the air?” I finally managed to ask.

“Yeah,” he laughed, taking a swig from his beer, “what of it?”

Well, faster than you could say “Scattershot,” a hail of tiny metal pellets came raining down against the windows and sides of the house with torrential force. O’Shea clasped his hands over his head and dove for cover. I don’t remember what happened next, but there was a lot of shouting.

Putin and O’Shea woke me up with blasts of ice water. “Look at him squirm!” Putin laughed. He didn’t usually say anything unless he was having fun at somebody else’s expense, so I knew I was in for trouble.

“We’ve found a cure for you” he announced, and O’Shea laughed in perfect time with my racing heartbeat.

“Hospital?” I asked feebly.

“Better,” he grinned, pulling out a funnel from behind his back. “DRINK!”

No one needed to hold me down, I didn’t have the strength to move. O’Shea held the funnel to my mouth and Putin poured the whiskey. “We’ll make you hold your alcohol like a man,” they declared.

I swatted at O’Shea’s hand but could barely make contact. My arms were like spaghetti.

Just as I couldn’t take any more, Adams came running into the room with a little white baggie dangling from his hand. In all the excitement I’d completely forgotten to give them the cocaine, and in going through my jacket (presumably for money) Adams had found it.

“Look what this bastard’s been keeping from us!” he shouted.

Everyone looked at me, including Galatea, who’d been peeking in quietly through the bathroom door. The funnel was thrown to the ground and punctuated with cries of “You Ungrateful Jew son of a bitch!”

An anonymous punch was sent flying at my temple, and before I knew it I was on the floor.

Trying to explain the china white was only a present I’d bought for their birthday cost me a series of kicks to the gut. It wasn’t long before I was puking all over the place and the attacks slowed down.

“These were brand new shoes, asshole!” were the last words I heard before a horde of footsteps left the bathroom to perform a symphony of snorts and razor blade cuts down the hall.

I woke up hours later feeling like the better portion of a million bucks.

Upon walking out into the morning sun, I decided to fire off a few rounds at O’Shea’s makeshift target before anyone else returned to the land of the living.

Aiming at the bull’s-eye was pointless since buckshot makes accuracy next to impossible, but shooting a gun feels good enough as is, and I was glad to have the strength back to pull the trigger.

I went to reload when something nipped at the tail of my shirt. I turned to find Morris dangling from a leash. At the other end was an angry looking old man in a fishing hat who demanded to know what I was doing on his lawn.

“YOUR lawn?” I asked.

“Yeah, my goddamn lawn!”

“YOU own this place?”

“Did I stutter? Christ you’re dense, boy!”

“And that’s YOUR dog?”

“Yeah, he’s my dog.”

“Do you always let him roam loose?”

“No, this is just my summer house. I live in New Brunswick; I only got in a few minutes ago.”

“ . . . Then you leave that poor dog out here to starve?”

“None of your goddamn business! ‘Sides, mutt has teeth like little prison shivs and can fend for himself.”

Morris smiled at me, teeth gleaming in the light.

He didn’t seem so tough the last time I saw him.

“Fair enough,” I sighed, putting the rifle down and taking a step back. “Listen, if this is your place . . .”

“It is,” he said firmly.

“I know, but there are some guys inside who claim it’s theirs. They invited me over this morning to practice my shooting, said the cabin belonged to them. Place looks like a war zone; I assume you didn’t leave it that way. I’ve never seen so much puke before!”

“Bastards! I’ll murder every last one of them.”
“I’m just a visitor, sir, I only got here a few hours ago, they brought me. Is it okay if I just go home? I really didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”

“Well . . . alright.”

“Thank you. Listen, they’re all unarmed and this is the only rifle. Take it. There are more of them than you and this’ll give you an advantage if they try anything.”

“That’s awfully helpful, thanks.”

“No problem, least I could do. Where’s the nearest bus stop by the way?”

“About 10 miles that-a-way to a Grey Hound station.”

“Thanks.”

It really was a beautiful day.

Months later I was on a southbound to Seaside. At the station I was picked up by Spina, the only trustworthy character I knew who would be at O’Shea’s that weekend.

The bungalow was two towns over from the boardwalk and all its excitement, sitting atop a hill of cramped, two story shacks like the king of low-income housing. Behind it was a strip of the Jersey shore. Not a particularly nice one, but an ocean view nonetheless.

O’shea and Adams were sitting inside on a king-sized couch made of empty beer cans. “Christ, how long did it take you guys to make that?” I asked.

“We finished ‘er last night,” Adams said, “but couldn’t . . . ”

“SHUT UP OR YOU’LL MISS IT!” O’Shea hissed.

They were taking a shot of Vermouth every time Lars Ulrich broke down and cried in “Some Kind Of Monster.”

So far they were both very drunk.

Outside the sun was shining and cheerleaders were playing volleyball. Neither of them seemed to notice.

“There he goes again!” Screamed O’shea, tilting his glass to the sky. “This shit is priceless!”

“See guys,” televised Lars whined, “My dad agrees with me, he doesn’t like the song either . . . why won’t you listen to me? You guys!”

“Where’s Putin” asked Spina.

“Out back,” Adams said, “SHHH!”

Behind the house, Putin was sucking a Pabst Blue as he beat off to the girls playing volleyball. He was alone that weekend, and this was apparently how he got by without his hipster harem.

It was sad, really.

“This is nowhere near as nice as our nudist beaches in Poland,” he announced, not slowing his formation out of any sort of modesty.

By now the girls had all noticed him and were screeching with disgust. That didn’t stop him though, he was determined to finish.

“Oh come off it!” he screamed back, “I wasn’t hurting anyone!”

But despite his reasoning, their screeches continued. Finally he just gave up and put his pants back on.

“You’re not even all that hot to begin with!”

At the boardwalk, Spina must’ve pumped 10 dollars into the same crane machine. Hanging above his row was a sign which read “A WINNER EVERY HOUR.”

As he was explained how close he was getting, a buzzer went off on the machine next to his and a novelty check was brought out for its player. I looked down at my watch. It was only five minutes past the twelve.

“Alright, fuck it, let’s go” he said, “but mark my words: I’m not leaving this place without winning one of those checks!”

“Christ, man. If you’re going to get a gambling addiction, at least get a dignified one.”

Back at the bungalow the guys were still drinking and seemed to find it insulting that Spina and I had aspirations for anything higher.

“You ungrateful Jew bastards” O’shea said. “I offer you all this alcohol, a place to sleep, food . . .”

“What food?” Spina demanded “all I see is you guys and your goddamn beercouch!”

“BEERCOUCH!” shouted Adams and Putin as they gave each other high fives. Adams was obviously too drunk to realize he’d just received a hand full of polish pubes.

“There’s Doritos in the cabinet” said O’shea.

“That’s not food!” Spina hollered at him. “How do you expect to survive the next few days?”

The trio shrugged and pounded back the rest of their brew.

“Fuck this,” Spina said, “Come on Vlad, I think I saw a Mcdonalds down the road.”

“You sons of bitches!” O’Shea bellowed, “If you go out . . . could you at least bring me something back? I’m fucking starving!”

“What’s the matter, Doritos not good enough for you?” Spina laughed as we walked out the door. We could hear him shouting the whole way down the hill.

It started to rain when we got to the Mcdonalds and we offered some cute college girls we’d met a ride home. One thing led to another and we wound up back at O’Shea’s. The place was empty and unlocked when we got there, which ordinarily might have given rise to suspicion, but now only brought relief.

The four of us sat down in the living room (if you could call it that) and had ourselves a drink, followed by a few more. Just as things were starting to get romantic, O’Shea and the crew stumbled back in soaking wet from the storm.
“Christ, where were you guys?” I asked, momentarily finding myself concerned.

“Fuck where we were,” O’shea replied, spitting rainwater from between his teeth, “WHERE’S MY GODDAMN DINNER?”

When we told him that we hadn’t gotten anything, he flew into a fit. He accused both of us of being “stingy Jew bastards” and then smashed an assortment of kitchen appliances with a rotary phone ripped right out of the wall. Spina tried to remind him that we were entertaining guests, but wound up sporting a fat lip instead.

Adams and Putin, meanwhile, just slumped down into the corner and cracked another round. Occasionally they would cheer when O’Shea broke something expensive, but otherwise they were pretty quiet.

“The girls will be fine with us,” O’Shea said when there was nothing left in the kitchen to break. “besides,” he laughed, “I’m sure they’d just think less of you for not being grateful to your hosts.”

I looked to Cindy, who was digging through my pockets for cigarettes. Our eyes met and she said “Just get them their food; we’ll be here when you get back.”

I sure hoped she was right.

When we finally returned to the cabin, the storm was giving the beach an L.A.P.D. beatdown and all the lights inside were dead. With all the rooms blackened, the stove-clock shone brighter than anything else. It read 2:05 – we’d been gone over an hour and a half.

Spina remembered a flashlight he’d seen in one of the cabinets and grabbed it. It hadn’t occurred to us that the lights would have turned on if we just hit the switch; we were too caught up in the moment.

A slight metallic creaking could be heard from upstairs. It was O’Shea, mounted on top of Cindy and giving her all he had. Cindy didn’t seem to be moving. I called her name but she didn’t respond. Her head lolled to the side as O’Shea pounded at her. She was unconscious.

O’Shea just kept going.

I pulled him off of her and clocked him in the jaw.

“This ain’t no synagogue,” he said, “we SHARE in this house . . . NOW WHERE’S MY DINNER?!”

I punched him again before even realizing it.

In the other room, Spina was doing the same thing with Putin and Adams.

“Yo Spina, we’ve got to get these girls out of here!” I said.

“Neither of these guys were wearing rubbers,” he called back, “we’ve got to get her to a hospital, who knows what kind of shit she might’ve picked up!”

“You’re not going anywhere” O’shea said, still crouched on the floor.

I kicked him right in the face and laid him out, then took Cindy, put her clothes back on as best I could, and threw her over my shoulder. I met Spina downstairs to find he’d done the same. On the way out I noticed a bottle of Jameson on the counter and grabbed it.

We hailed a surprisingly fortuitous cab at the bottom of the hill and had it take us to the boardwalk. When we got there we paid the cabbie extra to take the unconscious ladies to the hospital.

I don’t know why we didn’t take Spina’s car. That mistake would come back to haunt us later on.

The boardwalk was closing up and the rain was beating down. Prom weekend was a big thing for the cops, and as we passed by our friends’ expensive shorefront hotels looking for a place to crash, we saw them all being raided. Before long, all our friends were either arrested or too scared to leave their rooms. Meanwhile, the storm got worse, and I was chugging Jameson to stay warm.

“I can’t take anymore of this,” I said, slouching down onto a bus stop bench.

“Come on man,” Spina said, tugging at my arm, “the cops are going to see you!”

“A night spent in a holding cell would at least be DRY!”

“You’re not thinking straight. We need to find you someplace safe to crash while I run to get the car.”

“Spina, that’s like 6 miles from here!”

“No biggie, I used to be on the track team.”

“Distance?”

“No, sprinting, but I figure I could just do it in little bursts.”

“Spina, you’re my hero.”

It was decided that I would lay low beneath a Ford Explorer in an unlocked parking garage. There was no way a patrol car could see me, but I could definitely see them. They came by at 10 minute intervals, squad lights blazing. After about 3 or 4 of these, I started dozing off.

At some point I was dragged from under the car by a grubby set of hands, and though I can’t remember what happened next, when Spina finally came to pick me up I still had all the cash in my wallet and only a few scrapes around my eye.

Sneaking into O’Shea’s the next morning was easier than we thought. The door was left wide open. Nobody would dare rob the place with the three of them sitting atop the hood of O’Shea’s Acura clutching crowbars and baseball bats.

“Makes you wonder who had a worse night, eh?” Spina whispered as we crept inside.

The two of us split up and collected our respective knickknacks from the bungalow. As I was walking out the door I remembered a cable descrambler I’d picked up at a garage sale and went back to retrieve it. It was sitting on the beercouch in the living room. As I leaned over to pick it up, a large whooshing noise went past my right ear and half the beercouch was suddenly disintegrated.

O’Shea was standing over me with a metal Louisville slugger, ready to give it another swing. “Little early for Tee Ball, isn’t it?” I said, dodging another blow.

“LOUSY JEW SON OF A BITCH!” he shouted, swinging the bat again. This time it took out a shelf hanging a mere 3 feet above my head. His aim was getting better.

“You know what happened to people like you in the 40s?” I asked him.

“What?” he replied, winding up for another shot.

“NUREMBURG!” I shouted as I kicked him in the chest. His bat, which was being held overhead for a downswipe, fell to the floor behind him. The blow sent him reeling right over it, and in turn caused him to crash into a dilapidated coffee table.

“HEY VLAD, A LITTLE HELP?” called Spina from the other room.

I ran in to find Putin clinging to Spina’s back and clawing at his face while Adams swung wildly with a crowbar. I don’t know what was with those guys that morning, but neither could hit the broad side of a barn. Every time a swing would get close to Spina, he’d turn his back let Putin take the blow.

I chucked a VHS tape at Adams’ head and he dropped the crowbar, which in turn fell on Spina’s wrist.

“CHRIST VLAD, I ASKED FOR YOUR HELP!!” Spina yelped.

Adams was on his feet again and charging at me. I stepped to the side and he ran right past into O’Shea, who’d been standing behind me in the doorway ready to attack. The two toppled to the ground, O’Shea’s bat flying into the air, and were both whacked with it when it came down. Neither of them seemed to have any intention of getting back up.

Putin was the only one left now and he wasn’t letting go. His arms were wrapped around Spina’s shoulders as tightly as ever. I walked up to him and took a clean shot at his face, but it didn’t faze him.

“GET THIS GUY OFF OF ME!” Spina yelled. “HE’S CLAWING THE SHIT OUT OF MY FACE!!!”

“I’ve got an idea,” I said, pulling out my lighter.

“JUST HURRY!” Spina shouted.

I lifted the flame and touched it to the tail of Putin’s shirt. The fire took and started spreading across his back. It wasn’t until the fire reached his hair that he started to panic, springing from Spina’s back and running for the nearest water source.

Unfortunately, since the O’Sheas didn’t like to pay their water bills, he wound up having to run all the way to the ocean for relief. As he skipped across the sand, shirt engulfed in flame, he passed the girls he’d been watching the day before. They all pointed and laughed.

“What would have happened if he hadn’t gotten off of me?” Spina asked as we ran to his car.

“I don’t know, the words “flame broiled” ring a few bells . . .”

“You’re a crazy motherfucker.” He said.

“Compared to what we just saw, I’d actually like to think I’m pretty sane.”

“Alright, I’ll give you that.”

“So where to now?”

“To the boardwalk.”

“The boardwalk? Why in god’s name are we going to the boardwalk?”

“Because I’m not going home without one of those novelty checks!”

And we didn’t either. The blow from the crowbar made Spina’s hand spazz out while operating the crane’s joystick and somehow, by strange coincidence, caused it to pick up the right item that coincided with the cash prize. It was dumb luck, but that was the only kind we had that weekend. Too bad the check hardly covered the gas price for the drive back.

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