Excerpt from We Don’t Say Gay at Tranquility Bay

Paula leaned in to see, but he blocked it with his body as he turned to them and spoke gently. “This is shocking. Please be prepared.” Then he hit the large arrow, leaned out of the way, and let the video play.

Paula immediately recognized the flying green boxer shorts, a size too big so he could grow into them. She’d bought them for Nick on their school shopping trip. Her mouth set in a grim line as she watched the kids laughing at her son’s underwear. How did they get up that pole?

“Wait,” she said as a big boy talked to someone she couldn’t see. “Did he just call Nick Tinkerbel…?”

She never finished the thought.

Images of her sixteen year old son being brutally attacked by a bully, and fighting against six others as they stripped him naked, took over everything in her world. Nothing entered the realm of her consciousness except the sights and sounds of Nick struggling, and fighting, and losing much more than his underwear. Tears splashed unheeded into her coffee cup, still clutched numbly with both hands.

The horrifying image of Nick, her baby boy, cowering, mortified, his bare bottom exposed to the world as kids stood around and laughed, calling him filthy names and recording what they were doing to him, branded her brain and would stay burned in her memory until the moment she died.

Every nerve in her body grew inflamed and super sensitive. A long moan escaped her.

“I will destroy the bastard who attacked my son.” A giant tsunami of fury exploded from the center of her being. “I will hunt him down like the vicious dog he is and neuter him.” Unable to stop herself, astonishing words flowed like unrelenting lava. “And then I’ll track down each and every one of those worthless chicken-hearted, spineless cowards who helped him and do the same to them. Julian Cain, too. He’s the one who started it.” The speed of her rage increased.

“I’ll make them suffer ten times worse than they hurt my baby, and their bully-raising families too! None of them will ever know a day of peace. I will haunt them, terrorize everyone they love, destroy their futures. They will wish their parents aborted.” She began cackling.

What the hell? The sound she’d never made before hurt her ears, her mocking laughter wracked her body. I don’t act like this. Stop it.

But she couldn’t stop. Every emotion she’d repressed during the last year surfaced, riding a wave of bitter recrimination.

“They will pay! Before I’m through every single one of those criminal delinquents will beg and cower just like Nick did. And I’ll laugh in their faces as I film their humiliation. Castration is too good for them!” Her voice finally petered out as she gulped for air, suddenly sick to her stomach.

Both men stared at her.

Am I losing it? I can’t lose it, Nick is counting on me.

She must keep it together. I’m his mother for God’s sake, and Mark is his father. She closed her eyes and counted to thirty, breathing in on ten, out on twenty, in on thirty, out on forty before trusting herself to speak again. The video kept playing.