New Rock - Sampler The First 11 Chapters by Ryan Herrin - HTML preview

11 Tyler's Night

They left him.  Tyler's friends said that he was full of it, that he would chicken out.  The girls, Buffy and Kim, looked at him like he was a maniac, but he was going to do it.  He just needed a plan.  He had the lighter fluid with him.  Tonight was special, he wasn’t going to do what he normally did on Saturday nights.  He was going to get even instead.

Tyler was in Ben Roger's backyard.  The yard had been mowed that day and Tyler had noted that the teacher had not bothered to catch his trimmings.  He just left them clumped up in the backyard.  Tyler's stepfather had fired their landscapers last summer for doing the same thing.  Tyler smirked, thinking that Mr. Rogers wouldn't even make it mowing lawns.  Which wasn’t surprising, because Tyler thought that he was pretty awful at most things in life.

Tyler had had enough of Mr. Rogers and even with that stupid student teacher that he kept bringing by.  Tyler would have loved to hit that asshole for asking him about his future.  Who was he to ask Tyler about what he was going to be?  That idiot wanted to be a teacher.  He wanted to make thirty thousand dollars a year and just scrape by in life.  Tyler wasn't going to do that.  He was going to be just like his dad and go to school.  Once he was done with college, he would use his contacts in the fraternity that he would easily be accepted into because of his father's legacy and his stepfather's money and willingness to get him out of the house to succeed in business.  That's if he didn't make it sports.  Tyler was a pretty decent ballplayer, most of the other boys teased him about it.  They said that his best position was 'coach's son,' but he knew better. 

Tyler was plotting.  He didn't want to hurt anybody, probably.  Well at least not Roger's wife.  Then again, what kind of woman would marry a dick-wad like Rogers, let alone have a baby with him?  But no, Tyler was a lot of things, but he was not a murderer.  Even though some people may deserve to die.  How else could he send Rogers the message to quit acting like such a maniac in class?  He was constantly making the kids do projects, writing essays, and telling Tyler what to do.  Tyler thought about burning down his house, but that got a little attempted murdery, so he looked around for something else to burn.

Rogers had a patio furniture set in his backyard.  Tyler noticed that the tags were still on it.  Cheap, Rogers must have bought it during fall clearance.  How else would a teacher buy anything?  Chiselers.  Tyler doused the nylon umbrella with lighter fluid.  Hesitated.  It was unusual for kids at his high school to carry a Zippo lighter.  They were generally confiscated at school security checks and expensive for a high school kid, but Tyler didn't care.  He had the money and usually what he had in his pockets was about the tenth thing that he would ever get in trouble for at school.

The umbrella went up in a massive instant flame.  Tyler was mesmerized by how big and beautiful the fire was.  He was also shocked at how bad the nylon stunk and how quick the lighter fluid addled fire had melted the clearance rack lawn furniture.  Tyler saw a light come on in the neighbor's house.  In a panic, Tyler picked up the umbrella by the hot pole, cursed, and then used his shirt to handle the flesh burning metal and pushed the smoldering umbrella underneath Ben Roger's tool shed.  Tyler hid in the bushes in the far corner of the backyard.  He watched the neighbors for what felt like ten minutes.  They were not standing by the window watching him, and he did not see any cop cars pulling up, so he was probably safe.  That is when Tyler smelled something burning.

Apparently the umbrella was still smoldering enough to start burning the bottom floor board of the tool shed.  Tyler grinned at the smoke billowing up from the tool shed until he realized what was most likely in the toolshed.  Ben Rogers probably kept his lawn mower in the tool shed and not in his garage.  Which meant that Tyler had just set fire to a tool shed that had a fuel tank and probably a spare gas canister in it too.  Tyler just essentially made a gas bomb in his ninth grade English teacher's backyard.

Tyler snuck into the neighbor's yard and hid underneath a willow tree.  He watched as the shed was engulfed in flames.  The flames bounced in his eyes as he marveled at the shed burning.  This was really going to piss off Rogers, and it gave Tyler a raging erection.  Tyler knew that Rogers would have to come out eventually and watch his shed burn.  If the flames didn't wake him, the stench of the melted nylon umbrella mixed with the chemicals in the tool shed would.  Tyler couldn't wait to see his English teacher's reaction.  Once he saw Ben Rogers lose it, Tyler knew that he would need to sneak off and possibly take care of his hard-on, but he just had to see Rogers.  Tyler knew that he would be a prime suspect, but there was no way they could prove that he did anything.  Even when the rumor goes around school that he was the one that set the fire, Tyler would walk; he always had before. 

Tyler imagined how much street cred this would buy him.  Maybe even with teachers.  They would know how vulnerable they really were.  It was about time somebody showed the teachers that they couldn't hide behind their rules and position any longer.  Perhaps the other kids would finally see him for the badass that he really knew himself to be.  Girls would think of him as mysterious, dangerous.  Tyler felt that he had had an unfair reputation as being weak.  He had cried once during wrestling try-outs because his mom had not bought him the shoes he had wanted, and he felt ridiculous out there.  Kids were always picking on him for bogus things like that. Everyone picked on him.

Then the gas tank exploded.

In movies, macho protagonist rarely acknowledge helicopters exploding in slow motion behind them as they knowingly smoke or walk away with a grimace and designer sun glasses.  Tyler felt a small squirt of diarrhea as he heard the loud bang of the lawn mower exploding. He was a good twenty yards from the explosion and his ears were ringing.  His face felt extraordinarily hot.  His stepfather would kill him if he had burns on his face.  The only three things that grossed his stepfather out were people with deformed hands, retards working in the food industry, and burn victims.

Tyler ignored the cold wet dripping down his thighs and watched as a pregnant woman was the first to emerge onto the back porch of the Roger's house.  She looked horrified as the shed, a mere 15 feet from her house, was covered in raging flames. He knew that Rogers was married, he routinely droned on about his pregnant wife instead of doing what he was paid to do, teach, but it was still strange to see his wife in real life.  It had always been difficult to see his teachers as people that live lives.  When Tyler was in elementary school, he had assumed that the teachers slept in the gym and lived at the school.  He assumed they were always grumpy to see him because they had to eat at the school cafeteria three times a day. It was always bizarre when he would see a teacher at the store, at the movies, or anywhere that wasn't school. Tyler hoped that he hadn't burnt down the wrong shed.  That would impress no one.

Tyler's fear had been assuaged when Ben Rogers emerged from his house with a fire extinguisher.  Tyler saw the excitement and anger in his teacher's face being lit up by the fire.  It was glorious.

The lights around Ben Rogers’s neighborhood were beginning to brighten and Tyler did not want to get caught.  It was only a matter of time before this neighbor with the weeping willow that Tyler was hiding under would want to investigate his neighbor's firefighting and would spot the fourteen year old with a suspicious stain in the back of his pants, so he stole one more look at his teacher, smiled and then left for home, where he had soft core porn on cable television to help him manage.

But wait, there’s so much more!  Head on over to the Amazon Kindle Store to see how the story turns out in New Rock.  There’s 26 more chapters that answer all of your questions.  Happy Reading.