Lair by Carl Stubblefield (recommended reading TXT) 📕

the Fourth of July at Old Man Kector’s, and missed the fireworks. Jim’s father travelled a lot with his job and had brought a nice selection of illegal fireworks from Mexico. They decided to go and light some off in the neighborhood. Because of a city ordinance, it was illegal to light most fireworks within city limits. The gang didn’t let that stop them, throwing two boxes in the old Buick that Jim had inherited from his aunt.

They found an intersection and started lighting off fountain cones. Maybe it was the age, the humidity or just being low quality, but a lot of the fireworks were duds. An old lady who lived at one of the houses by the intersection threatened to call the enforcers multiple times, which had little to no effect on the festivities. They all knew the chance of them coming was slim to none.

Gus had some bottle rockets he wanted to fire off. He walked to one of the cones that was sparkling in small puffs. Since it was a large cone, this one was most likely a dud that would die early. Gus leaned to grab a cone nearby to serve as a base for his bottle rockets when the sputtering cone exploded! Gus saw a huge flash, then everything went dark. Gus heard the old lady scream that the enforcers were on their way and she hoped that we all got in trouble. The other guys decided this was a good time to wrap things up and ran back to the car. Gus, still blinded, followed the noise and patted the car when he found it, feeling his way to the door and scrambling inside.

Gus panicked at the thought that the proximity to the firework exploding had done some permanent damage to his eyes. He still could not see anything. He did hear that Dave hadn’t made it in the car and was screaming for Jim to wait. Jim tore off, and Dave’s voice trailed off in the distance.

“That was cold, dude!” Chuck said.

“We’ll circle around, give me a minute!” Jim retorted.

They drove around for a while and soon came back to the scene of the crime when no police came. They found that Dave had hidden in a ditch, lying flat in the tall weeds.

No cops ever showed up, or the guys were gone by the time they did. Bit by bit, Gus began to get his vision back around the sides and it slowly returned to his whole field of vision. The force of the explosion had turned off the street lights and had reinforced the impression that Gus had lost his sight. It was getting late and the gang had had enough excitement for the night. They all had work tomorrow—morning shift too—they headed home.

###!###

A loud shriek awoke Gus. It was pitch black now that the fire had burned down, and despite the happy dream, he felt a cold chill. In the distance he could hear something struggling and wailing in pain. The shrill noise cut off suddenly and Gus suddenly felt a chill that had nothing to do with the slight breeze.

He could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears in the eerie quiet as he stared out into the darkness. His little alcove kept the nearby jungle out of sight, but there must be some predators out there. His brain went into overdrive trying to think of things to do to protect himself, but he could do little in the dark. He crawled out of his palm frond lean-to and grabbed the serrated knife he had made and crawled back into his flimsy shelter. It took him a while to calm down and fall into a fitful sleep.

###!###

Gus then dreamed of one of the gang’s first jobs. The super whom they all worked for was a crazy old guy everyone called Kector, because he spoke with a thick, indistinct accent and he liked to hoard things. Originally his nickname was the Collector but it became Kector after the gang took to saying his name with the accent. He was actually named after a crazy marsupial or something, but none of the henchmen ever called him by that name. He should have retired years ago, but was afraid that some other upstart super would steal his ‘collections.’

The collections in question were the random assortment of things that the super had hoarded over about forty years. Gus and the guys’ job was to patrol the stacks and report anything suspicious. It was the easiest of jobs. If Kector only knew that more damage was done to all his hoarded garbage by henchmen goofing around than by any invader, he would’ve been shocked.

Kector’s power was some kind of hypnotism, and he used it to influence others. He actually had collected some items of real value, but those stayed in the residential area of the lair.

The immediate supervisor for the henchmen was named Buchanan. He was one of those guys who wasn’t very short, but had a bad case of Napoleon complex. His position giving him the ability to boss someone else around was something that he had lacked his whole life and he took full advantage. He only was around once or twice a week, so most of the time it was alright.

One day when the gang was playing baseball with some crates of snowglobes and a giant wiffle bat, they almost got caught by the uptight toady. Buchanan luckily assumed that one of the boxes had fallen from the lopsided stacks and ordered everyone to clean up the mess.

Despite his best efforts, the guys had a good time regardless, and they could tell it secretly pissed Buchanan off, which made it all the funnier. They would act all serious and professional when he would come around, but it was crazy how something becomes exponentially more hilarious when you’re not allowed to laugh. Sometimes it was all they could do to hold in the laughter until he left the floor.

###!###

Gus awoke to