Here’s something you might not know: writers (and other assorted “creative types”) can be somewhat unreliable. I had originally planned to publish guest pieces exclusively throughout February and March after receiving four very intriguing pitches for essays and reviews that then never materialized. But since I’m not one to chase people (or writing) down, I’ve decided to simply get back in the saddle myself. So, for the time being, Electric Dreams will be the Fred Show once more and I’ll do my best to make up for the month-long radio silence, starting with this short story I wrote recently, one that is centered on my favorite sport, one that I myself used to partake in for many years as a young’un. I’ve also been rereading a famous postmodern novel from the 1970s, one which Jean Baudrillard called “the first great novel of the universe of simulation,” and anyone familiar with it will undoubtedly be able to spot its influence scattered somewhere amongst the words below. I hope you enjoy and as always, thank you for reading.
It was only Joel’s third shift of the game and a nasty slash made it his last. Rushing into the corner of the offensive zone, his eyes trained on the black disk that slid before him along the cold, shadowy white of the ice, he suddenly felt a momentary sharp pain, the prick of a needle jabbed into a tender patch of skin, then the heat of the blood that was soaking the leather of his glove, pooling in its index finger sheath, leaving a trail of red splotches as his momentum slowly carried him into the corner from which the game had already moved on. He collapsed onto the hard frozen surface and the referee’s shrill whistle brought the action to a stop.
“You alright, son?” called his coach as he jogged over the blue line.
“We gotta get him off the ice,” said the referee more to himself than anyone else. “We’re gonna have to get this cleaned too.” Getting down on one knee, he continued, to Joel this time: “Don’t take your glove off until you’re off the ice, alright?”
The rink which had, just moments ago, been the site of danger, motion, noise — sticks knocking against each other, the crunch of blades cutting into ice, shaving its surface, players calling for passes and line changes — had turned lifeless and barren, an absence like the ceasing of a heartbeat or of heavy machinery’s grinding, pumping. A man dressed in a quilted jacket and a Colorado Avalanche cap, holding a snow shovel like a hockey stick, slipwalked onto the rink in a deliberate one-step-two-step-three-step-slide rhythm. He scraped the blood off the ice, gathered the shavings in the shovel and made his way back to the bench, taking hurried, uncontrolled, irregular steps this time. Then… intermission music started playing, the players stepped back onto the ice, the referee blew his whistle. After a match penalty announcement, the motion and noise picked back up, danger permeating every quick turn, every shot, every contact along the boards.
The locker room smelled of sweat, damp pads, old towels and rags and sports bags, rubber, tape. Joel took off his glove and a stream of blood poured down onto his socks, gently thudding against the plastic of his shinguard. The skin at the tip of his finger had been torn off, his hand was covered in crusty dark brown streaks. The bed of his nail had turned blue and the nail jutted out of his finger at a forty-five-degree angle. Joel screamed as warm tears flowed down his reddened cheeks, mixing with the sweat that had settled on his face, forming hundreds of droplets on his nose and cheekbones. His wet hair clung stubbornly to his skin, reaching into his forehead, towards his brow like the fangs of a hungry animal. Ralph, the team gofer, turned Joel’s head away from the injury while Glenn, the assistant coach, hovered over the scene, a worried expression on his face.
“Frankly,” he said, “it’s looking pretty bad, kid.”
“What the fuck is that other kid’s problem?” asked Ralph. “Did you see how big that son of bitch was? They must have him on steroids or something.”
“Best to call a doctor at this point,” said Glenn. He bent down to meet Joel’s eyeline. “I’m afraid that’s it for this game.” Joel’s screams had subsided and he was quietly sobbing, staring off into the middle distance. “The doctor’s gonna get you patched up, though. You’ll be back on the ice in no time.” No reaction. “They sent that asshole kid to the showers.” He began grumbling: “Little piece of shit.” Joel’s sobs halted momentarily as he found some solace in the fact that his assistant coach was cursing in front of him. Choked laughter left his mouth even as his face was still twisted into a grimace from the pain and anger and disappointment. Coach gave player a hard shove, a gesture Joel imagined was usually reserved for Glenn’s adult friends. Snot made its way down from his nose to his glistening pink lips. His tongue glowed a menacing strawberry red as it cravenly went after the mucus and gathered its salty taste and slimy texture in Joel’s mouth.
The locker room quieted down and the sounds of the game going on outside made their presence known. The sadness and the anger began fading slightly and the familiar surroundings allowed warmer memories to enter the young player’s mind: the equipment table Alex, the team’s captain, had made a habit out of taking naps on. The door that lead to the showers where the backup goalie, Patrick, had shown him and three other teammates how to masturbate “the way guys in porn do it” — shock and exchanged glances when he ejaculated with two successive thick, strong bursts of semen and three slightly weaker ones that followed after a beat. The bathroom where they would dip the toilet brushes into the bowls and try to spray their teammates’ sisters with the filthy water. He had been sitting right where he was sitting now when he told his coach he wanted to have the career Peter Forsberg had. Ralph untied his skates, took of his socks and shinguards, and put on his shoes. “Your dad will be here in a minute.”
“Don’t worry,” said his father in the car, trying to be reassuring. “Peter missed a lot of games because of injuries.” He looked over at Joel in the passenger seat — he was staring out the window. “He always came back, though.”
“Except from his last one,” said Joel.
“He was a forty-year-old man. He was old, way past his prime.”
“Actually, he was thirty-eight.”
“You’re gonna heal up and you’re gonna get back out there. Next time you play that shithead kid you’ll score on him and you can get right in his face.”
Thinking of the games and practices he would miss, Joel began sobbing again. His father put his hand on the back of his son’s head.
“One day,” he said, “this will be a memory you’ll look back on and you’ll appreciate it for making you into the person you will have grown into by then.” He paused for a few seconds, glancing at the soft skin behind Joel’s ear. “You want to be Peter Forsberg now bu—”
“I don’t wanna be Peter Forsberg!” cried Joel, a juvenile anguish ringing through his voice. “I don’t wanna be anybody!” His father fell silent, surprised by the force of his son’s outburst. The car slowed down as it pulled up to a red light at a busy intersection, coming to a complete stop with a brief high-pitched squeal. His father tried again: “There will come a time in your life where you’re gonna have to be yourself. You with your own issues and your own past injuries — you’re going to have to find a way to be happy with that. You can’t spend your life trying to be like others or hoping your story will be just like the ones your favorite NHL players had.”
Even as, unbeknownst to himself, the words lodged themselves in Joel’s memory, in the moment, they sounded vague and muffled, like something talked about in the next room, barely cutting through the overstimulating visual information of the heavy traffic from which they were only separated by the car door, a few inches thick. His thoughts wandered: first he imagined himself opening the door while driving on a highway and the violence with which his body, his limbs would be shredded and broken under the weight of the vehicles he would unavoidably be caught under as he bounced off the pavement. The images fractured and dissolved and his mind focused on the grumble of the motor which ascended into a nasal hum as the lights turned green and his father accelerated onto the intersection. He then imagined their car being struck by a speeding eighteen-wheeler, spinning as it’s flung across the street like a rock skimming on water before grinding to a halt amidst a flurry of broken glass and the sound of metal scraping against concrete, the scene quieting down to reveal a still life: a grotesque parody of crumpled paper, a strange concertina made of steel, aluminum, and plastic, surrounded by light blue shards.
Joel studied his father’s silhouette — he could not imagine him as someone who had ever been his age, someone who once sat in a car while his own father tried to console him. Looking down at his hand, he tried bending his finger but the pain made him stop immediately. After a minute he tried again but the result was the same. He cycled through more car crash scenarios but instead of himself and his father, he imagined the player who had slashed him sitting in a car with his mother. Picturing the other boy’s mangled body parts sticking out from the wreckage, the white of the bone puncturing the pale skin of his forearm and his fingers twisted in different directions like those of a glove left lying on a rainy sidewalk, Joel felt at ease for the first time since he had collapsed onto the ice. The crying stopped and he bent his finger through the pain.