Archive of Our Own ^beta

"You have to do it, Jamie. You have to kill me."

I look up at the guy. Scrawny. Cowardly. Perfect comedy foil for some series of insurance ads. It makes sense, doesn't it? His boss, or friend, or whomever, the lady, she's all smart and confident... But not Jamie. No, Jamie's a little pencilneck pipsqueak dweeb. Jamie's barely even a man. He's like a boy, if a boy were also somehow your spokesperson for a series of advertisements. Actually, now that I've said that, I realize that having a small boy sell products is not all that weird, not really unusual even. They had that Life Cereal kid, and Marcus the PSP boy who was always yelling on television. But nevertheless, Jamie's there. Above me. The man could barely knock me down, I had to lay out on my back like a bear who got hit with the tranq dart in the wrong place so it took him a while to actually be knocked out. I had to hand him the damn pan. How many men have to hand the pan to their executioner? God forsake me. Were I not about to die, I'd feel nothing but humiliation for the rest of my life. Now, I'm just frustrated. And somewhat aroused.

He cowers. His skinny fingers grip the handle of the cast-iron skillet I bought at a Menard's in Duluth, Minnesota in the summer of 2011. "I can't! I can't kill a man! Alfred, why are you making me do this?"

I barely know the guy and he calls out to me as if I'm his friend since childhood. We work together. At least, we do for the time being, once he does his job he'll be working with me no longer. Jamie didn't understand that, when he took his night job working the counter at the Shell Station in Indio, California on Thursdays and Fridays from 11 PM to 7 AM, he entered into a pact with me. He said he only needed the job for some extra cash because he owed money to an ex-wife and the Progressive gig was all getting siphoned off anyway. He was gettin' gouged - to his secret husband, Allan, to his secret boyfriend, the talking box, even to his illegitimate son, the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese dinosaur. Jamie was stretched thin, and he saw the $18.00 per hour we paid and leapt for it. If only he'd known.

See, I'm in a Pagan cult. I'm a Pagan, and I was born a Pagan, and, hopefully in the next five to ten minutes, I will die a Pagan. I believe in four gods - Three of them are Larry, Curly, and Moe, from the Three Stooges, and the fourth is my Dad. To my son, it is the same way, I am one of his four gods, but his other three have been updated to match the changing comedy of the day, and they're the Lonely Island guys. One of the plentiful bylaws of our Pagan cult is the act of "Panning", which is different from the far more common act of "Paneling", which is where a panel of five elderly men all get together, hurl insults at you, cut themselves on the forearm, then lightly flick the blood from their own body towards you, and then dump one of those big coolers full of green Gatorade on you like they do at the Super Bowl. No, Panning is where one is beaten to death with a pan because of a slight they committed. With our Gas Station being a front for our Pagan Cult, which is named the Sparrownites, after Eric Sparrow, the villain from the 2003 Video Game "Tony Hawk's Underground", and each of our other employees save for Jamie a Sparrowman, it was only a matter of time until Jamie found himself caught up in a Sparrownite Ritual. It's a shame that he happened to watch me accidentally step on a packet of Peanut Butter M&Ms (I admit it doesn't sound like the greatest slight, but the food within has some nourishment in the form of the peanut butter which would have been beneficial to some and had it been a normal bag of M&Ms I likely wouldn't have been up for a Panning, and it's really more the presence of the two sentient beings upon the bag which led to my breaking of the rule. I wish it had been a packet of Reese's Pieces, but alas, my time has come, and there is no point in debate).

But the time has come, nonetheless. "Fucking do it, Jamie." I say to him. I'm grim, I'm not angry. I understand the weight of this. I feel that he understands it, too. It's ritual, I explained to him this morning. It's an accepted ritual required of Sparrownites. I committed a slight, and he witnessed me commit it. He needed to pan me.

I see him raise his scrawny little arms, little poles of skin and bone, up above his head. If he's not careful, he'll do himself in by dropping the pan on his own head. He seems to whisper a prayer to himself. Rainer Maria, Rainer Maria, Rainer Maria, full of grace, he repeats. I do not think he knows what he's saying but he is heard. My mind blankens as I see the pan begin to drop, his arms pushing forward with as much force as this tiny little boy man can muster. Gravity and the weight of a quality Menard's product will do most of the work here.

Impact. I feel it. I see white. I feel the intense, all-encompassing pain cover me. The world goes black for a second, but my vision blurs back up to the terrified face of Jamie once again. I hear him shrieking. "Oh God!! Oh No!" It's pathetic, but I understand it. I can feel the breeze tickling the open gash on my forehead. A good shot for what it was. A stronger man would've killed me instantly with that accuracy. But I know another whack will be necessary. It is not without honour to be killed by multiple whacks. It is actually a sign of strength and a sign of trust from your panner. It shows that you were a beloved and worthy man, one who made friends with the weak and whose death was a cause of trepidation to at least one other. But I've seen enough of these - I've done enough of these to know. These are my final seconds. Even a weakling such as Jamie will do me in with another concerted whack.

He raises it again. I close my lips and keep my eyes wide open. I nod in acceptance. "I respect you, Jamie", I mutter. It's a faux-pas, but he must know. He must know that I respect him.

I see the pan come forward again. I see the veins on the man's scrawny muscles tense and his elbows drop. It comes. It comes. It comes.