Fight Song A Novel - By Joshua Mohr Page 0,13

stooge

Bob Coffen stands in his kitchen, waiting for the macaroni to reach the right softness so he can pull the pot off the burner. He sips from a tumbler of vodka and watches his son, Brent, play one of Bob’s signature games, Disemboweler IV: Let’s Get Bloody!

In this final installment of the franchise, the game chronicles the carnal sojourns of cannibals traipsing through post-apocalyptic America in the hopes of disemboweling the last surviving citizens of this once-proud nation and chomping on their flesh. Right as one lucky cannibal is about to dig in and feast on a victim, they shout to their cohorts, “Let’s get bloody!” Once a cannibal croons this signature line, the corresponding graphics never fail to render a scene rich in slaughter, fantastic scribbles of innards and organs.

Brent is good at it, too—perhaps genetically inclined. No normal nine-year-old would be so gifted at these games that readily stump people twice his age. Brent’s cannibal dominates the action. In fact, he now rips out another character’s larynx and munches away on it, holding the larynx in his hand like an apple.

Brent says to Bob, “Did you see that move, Dad?”

“Good work.”

“I’m already on level five.”

“Keep it up.”

“Benny and Tommy can’t get past level two.”

“You’re a natural.”

“Tommy’s cat has worms.”

“That’s no fun.”

“Let’s get bloody!” Brent says, smiling at Bob, his avatar still choking down the larynx.

Coffen takes another swig of vodka. He’s turning his children into house cats: too helpless to fend for themselves outside the subdivision’s safe haven. They’re going to be easy targets, like him. Their futures are lined with oleanders and plocks.

He spoons out a single piece of macaroni and pops it in his mouth—still a bit crunchy.

Jane enters, dolled to the nines, walks over to a hallway mirror and fusses with her hair, working the wisps back into the elaborate pattern of braids. She has long worn her hair in a system of weaving braids that reminds Coffen of crisscrossing highways. It’s something he’s always loved about her—the way she’s kept this unique hairstyle into middle age, while other subdivision wives look increasingly homogenized.

“Are you sure he’s not too young to play that game?” Jane asks.

On-screen, Brent’s cannibal repeatedly bashes a citizen’s head onto the asphalt, then laps up the stream of synapse stew leaking from the opened skull.

“It’s nothing worse than what’s online.”

“Does that mean he should play it?”

Bob picks up his vodka and has another sip. “Are you having fun?” Coffen says to his son.

“Let’s get bloody!” Brent calls over.

“He’s enjoying himself,” Coffen says.

“He’s nine,” Jane says.

“It’s better we’re open with him about the real world, so he feels safe enough to ask us questions later about sex, puberty, drugs … ”

“Cannibalism,” she says.

“Exactly. Nothing is taboo in the Coffen residence.” Yet once this posit escapes Coffen’s lips, his face changes. Shoulders slump. He’s immediately saddened because not even his denial, a normally impenetrable fortress of rationalizations and white lies and blind spots, can offer asylum from the simple fact that almost everything is taboo in the Coffen residence these days.

Luckily, the conversation can’t continue because their daughter, Margot, three years older than Brent, comes into the room, scrolling on her iPad’s touch screen. Margot looks up and screams to Brent, “Don’t miss the teeth upgrade on the next level, or you’ll never be able to eat those Navy SEALs.”

“I know that,” he says.

“You always miss it.”

“I do not.”

“Margot, can you help me with something?” Coffen asks his daughter, watching her fingers work the iPad.

“I’m hanging with a friend right now, Dad.”

Coffen looks around the room. “Who?”

“Ro.”

“Where is she?”

“You mean, ‘Where are we?’” She shakes her tablet at him, allowing Bob to make out a 3-D representation of the ocean on its screen, two avatars in wet suits, kicking their finned feet. “And the answer is scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef.”

“Why don’t you invite her over for real?” Coffen says.

“The Barrier Reef is so much cooler than being here for real,” she says.

While Jane continues to manipulate her maze of hair and Margot studies her underwater trek and sort of watches Brent’s cannibal feast on a minister, Coffen pulls the pot of macaroni off the heat without tasting it again, dumps it in a colander. Then he pours it back into the pot and stirs in the orangey-cheese powder and milk for the kids’ dinner. He slops it into two bowls and stands there drinking vodka.

His mother-in-law, Erma, waddles in. She’s five feet and one inch of diabetic rage and immediately