Rasputin “I want you to kill Rasputin,” you say to the baseball team. “With your bats. And all of you will graduate with honors.” “Bring it together,” Johnny, the team captain, says. Billy and Petey and Frankie and Juan and the others gather in a huddle, put hands together. “Team!” they shout. You watch them from your office window, howling from the school parking lot in the back of Johnny's pickup, brandishing fungo bats, Louisville Sluggers. Kyle has a cricket bat. But no one ever sees the baseball team again. You've successfully blown Highland High's chance at the state pennant to hell. And two days later the doorbell rings and it's Rasputin, without even a bruise, come to pick your daughter up for the prom. Rasputin wears an orchid corsage pinned to his cassock. “How are you this evening, Mr. Dixon?” Rasputin says to you. “Just call me Tom,” you tell him. “Hell, you're older than I am.” “Whatever you say, Mr. Tom,” Rasputin says. “Isn't that sweet, Daddy?” Ashley says. “Mr. Daddy,” she says and giggles. Rasputin pins a boutonniere suspiciously close to your daughter's breast. “You kids have a good time,” you tell them and force a smile. When they are gone, you retire to the den where you have hidden three small dolls a hoodoo woman has fashioned for you in the likeness of Rasputin: dolls painstakingly woven from bits of his own hair. You douse one in oil and immolate it in the toaster. Another you dismember with confiscated M-80s, blowing it apart in the closed garage. The air is thick with voodoo doll stuffing. Tufts of nappy beard float down around you like stardust. You prepare to crucify the remaining Rasputin doll on a two-by-four, when you drop the hammer, sobbing. What have I become? you think. What has driven me to this? You've only ever wanted what's good for Ashley, you tell yourself. But here you are, an attempted murderer, dispatching voodoo dolls in your garage. Perhaps you're nothing but a suffocating, vindictive middle-aged control-freak. You vow to change for the better. Ashley should be free to make her own mistakes in life, without her overbearing father killing off her boyfriends. But in the morning you discover itchy-looking beard marks on Ashley's neck. You relapse. You charge back to the den to drive nails through Rasputin's belly, to plot his brutal demise. But this proves redundant. Reading through the classified section of the paper for open high school principle positions, a curious article catches your eye. Controversial Russian mystic Rasputin, you read, spiritual adviser to Czar Nicolas II and recent Alpine school district substitute teacher, was found dead of an apparent broken heart yesterday morning in his apartment. “So,” you say to Ashley. “How is Rasputin these days?” “Oh, Daddy,” she says. “That was so last week.” You begin to whistle. What was that line from King Kong? Something about it not being the planes, but beauty that killed the beast? “Besides,” Ashley tells you, “I'm in love with a boy named Caligula.” |
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© 2007 prickofthespindle.com |
Nathan Robison is a creative writing MFA student at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. He enjoys writing and running, and is obsessed with old maps, especially those depicting nonexistent places. He was born on the island of Hy-brazil and currently divides his time between Roanoke and his palatial estate on Isola de los Demonios. |