Fight

Note: This is a bit from the nanowrimo project I started before I decided to write a screenplay instead. There's some past tense/present tense disagreement that I'm aware of but haven't taken the time to fix. I probably won't either unless I decide to do more with this. This bit from the nanowrimo comes several pages in, but I think works as a stand alone.

*****

Another night I hear loud bass beats pumping and vibrating my floor, so I go see if Melanie is throwing a party. Her door is open and there's this wide, muscular guy with a huge head and greasy black hair spread across a couch. He has this small girl with thin wrists across his lap and they look like they're having a good time. He saw me and motioned me in. "What happened to Melanie?" I said. I guess I could have been more polite about this, and actually introduced my self and asked for his name, but right then I was kinda horny and hoping she would be there. I hadn't been steadily sleeping with anyone since the last fall semester.
"Don't know, guy." He said. "Grab something to drink from the kitchen though, we're having a move in party." I go to the kitchen, bang the refrigerator door into the oven, and bring back a bottle of Miller Lite. I tell him my name is Roland. "Like Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came?" He said.
"Partially, yeah." I tell him.
"Danny's my name." He extends his hand. We shake. "This is Rose." She nods at me and slurs out a hello. After that many other guys and girls show up. They dress in thrift store wool jackets and faded shirts with Rolling Stones and other rock band emblems. I find out that Danny and most of these people are grad students in the Literature department. I tell them I'm a senior studying Philosophy. After awhile I'm drunk and arguing something trivial about Jane Austin to the guy in a Motley Crue shirt. Danny approaches me, "Could you take Rose back to her place? She's ready to pass out, and needs to get back to her place before classes start tomorrow." I can tell he, and the others, are drunker than I, so I take her.

Twenty four minutes later I'm in the driveway of a nice suburban home in the heart of Coalville. I want to ask Rose how a grad student can afford this place, but she's passed out. I drag her out of the passenger seat, and stumble with her slung over me fireman style to the front door. The door is locked and I paw through her pockets for a key. While I do this an obese man with a golf club opens the door and growls at me, "What the fuck have you done to my daughter?" My left hand is in one of her back pockets searching for a key, he sees this, and forces her from me. A large woman steps from a shadow behind the man and takes Rose. "She's sixteen years old. How fucking old are you?"
"Twenty two." I said. This is true, but I look at least twenty eight. Smoking and bad genes haven't made me repulsive, but have aged me.
"Fuck you, twenty two." He chants at me and swings his driver. I thank whatever vague divine nature I sorta speculate about that it's not an iron. The driver's weak shaft hits me in the side and stings but it bends to the shape of my torso. This only enrages him further and he starts grabbing at me while I slap at his hands.
"I don't know her." Slap his hand. "I was only asked to drop her off." He cold-cocks me in the jaw." I fall into a small patch of garden in their front lawn. My heels have knocked a few sunflowers out, and Rose's mother screams. Her husband kicks me like a soccer hooligan for I'm not sure how long. A neighbor comes over in a pale blue robe wearing a police officer's hat and wielding a nightstick.
"Who the fuck is this, Jim." He said. "A burglar?"
"This guy raped my daughter." Rose's dad said. At this point I lose it and start screaming. I yell that's not true. I yell I was at a neighbor's party and he asked if I could give this girl a ride home. I thought she was in college with all the other guy's at the party. I don't think anyone fucked her while there. I'm balling and worried this officer neighbor is either going to join in the beating or going to hall me down to jail. He stays calm though. He's a professional. He helps me up and holds my shoulders and keeps asking me to just breath slowly, and after some time asks me to repeat everything I just said. I do, and after some time the cop neighbor gets Rose's dad to believe what I'm saying enough to go wake his daughter and ask her where she's been. She's sober enough by this point and tells him she was out with a guy she met at the Pizza Hut where she works. She's crying cause she's worried her dad's probably going to beat her like he just did to me. She says this guy came in and thought he recognized her from one of the 101 courses he taught last semester and invited her to a move in party he was throwing.
Twenty minutes later after some more yelling, crying, and apologizing from everyone but the officer neighbor, he decides to take me to the hospital to make sure nothing's broken. One x-ray later I'm relieved to find out my body is just bruised up. I pick up some painkillers from the hospital pharmacy and get taken back to my car. The light's are out in Rose's place when I get back. I take my car and dart out of there. I don't go back to Danny or his friends that night. Up in my room I take several painkillers with a shot of vodka and pass out. When I wake up the next day, I've slept through two of my classes.
Two days later Danny and I are in the parking lot behind our building. My left cheek is swollen and blue. He looks at my swollen face with curiosity, and I tell him what happened when I took Rose home. For a moment he looks at me with great concern, and maybe some shame, but then he laughs at me. His eyes don't leave mine until he finally blinks the happy tears away. "That's classic." He said. "Real fucking classic." I miss my night class then because he offers to take me down the block to Mallory's and buy me as much booze as I'll take.