Mascara Contra Mascara

I dab a light splotch of blood from my forehead as Bill runs toward me like a rampaging, beer-bellied rhinoceros. He charges at me in slow-motion, as I view the 200 pound plus fourteen year old through a curtain of crimson-smattered, bleach blonde bangs. My hair waves in side to side movement, like window drapes fluttering in an early summer updraft, as a warm, musky breeze floats across the tool shed. He’s only seconds away from making impact, but I view his movement in microseconds, as if watching a movie frame-by-frame. I run my tongue over my bottom lip, and temporarily gaze at the dirt-coated floorboards to my side. I slowly streak a fingertip over the dust-soaked wooden inlay, and stare at the deep, gray stain it leaves upon my flesh. It’s amazing, really, just how much you can think about in such a short period of time. I continue to scan the area to my right; there is a small accumulation of plasma pooled upon the ruffles of a bright, blue rain tarp. Under the black light of the ceiling, my freshly spilled blood radiates a bizarre, eerie purple color; in the periphery of my vision, I spot the silvery gleam of a recently discarded razor blade, it’s once-shimmering edge dulled by thick, blackened smudges. I look up at the ceiling once more; I gaze past the dangling light bulbs, and past the rafters, which are cushioned by a number of ropes, extension cords, and old mattresses, and I focus my stare upon the orange and brown balsa wood that serves as the topmost plasterwork of the outbuilding. Through a light tear in the roofing, I see a firefly quickly flash a mustard-hued explosion, before returning to the vacant, deep-blue ocean of the early afternoon sky. For a brief moment, I note the stirring of crickets in the background, and a quaint sensation of complacency washes over me. As Bill’s kneecap hurdles toward me like a flying dumbbell, my face is frozen in a state of oblivious contentment. “Gwarghh!” Bill slams his patella into the metallic siding of an enormous icebox while shouting a downright primitive battle cry. His kneecap barely grazes my right ear, as his leg connects with the mammoth refrigerator, resulting in a loud, reverberating thud. “Owww!”, my gargantuan cousin cries as he seeps his fingers into the slits of the icebox’s open grating. With a haphazard swing of his wrist, I hear the sound of my video recorder toppling over, thus instigating an impromptu finale for the day’s filming. “Did it shut off?” I shout. Bill continues to silently inspect the camcorder. “Did it shut off?” I state once more, this time in a more astringent tone. “No, I don‘t think” he retorts, as he cautiously scratches the side of his head while fiddling with the numerous buttons on my camcorder. “All right, let’s see just how much we managed to record,” I state, as I quickly jump up from my seated positioning. “No, it’s cool, man, really. I know how this thing works, I remember all the buttons to press. . .” Bill assures me. “Dude, it’s still my camera, remember?” I assertively remind my younger cousin. “No, really, trust me, I’ve got it! I know how to work this thing, really, now stop messing around with it!” he shouts with considerable agitation in his voice. “No, for God’s sake, just let me look at it!” “Dude, I got this thing!” Our hands initialize a brief, miniature wrestling bout. As he slides his thumb across a number of buttons, I attempt to yank his hand from the camcorder by clasping my hand around his wrist. He ripostes to my fumbling about by locking his freed hand around mine, as we simply tug back and forth on one another until Bill breaks free and picks up the device. “Now look, I told you, I know how this works! See, all I wanted to do was hit this button here and stop the recording. See!” Sure enough, Bill flicks the button, but instead of hitting the bright, red knob that controls the recording functions of the unit, he hits the black switch underneath it. “Oh, you big, dumb shit!” I shout. “That wasn’t the stop-record button, that was the erase-all button!” Bill’s face twists into a perplexed emotion that lie somewhere between befuddlement and guilt. I simply walk towards him and unlatch the camera from his grip, motioning to him as I begin to exit the shed. “Well, what are we going to do?” Bill inquires. “I mean, we spent all morning working on that, and I finally managed to hit that one move I’ve been working on, and now, all of that planning ends up going nowhere?” I stop at the doorway, and place an open palm upon the grimy woodwork of the outbuilding’s threshold. Cradling my camcorder underneath my armpit like a football helmet, I turn towards my cousin and address his concerns. “Well, yeah, we put a lot of hard work into this morning, there’s no doubt about that. The thing is, all of this is just practice, and that’s it. We still have a lot of learning to do, and a lot of dues to pay before we make it to the top. We have to do more research, and more training, and work harder.” “Uh, D.J.,” Bill states while staring at me with a confounded glare. “You think you might want to do something about that big ass cut on your head before you go back inside?” Momentarily halting, I reach up and massage my hairline, feeling a thick accumulation of dried blood upon my scalp. Rubbing my index finger over the scabbed over wound, I finally press the glowing, crimson knob on the camcorder and reply ,“Yeah, remind me to wash that thing before my mom sees it.”