The Wrecking Ball

It is Christmas eve, 2052. The temperatures in a midtown Manhattan building scheduled to be demolished in a week are freezing, but the encampment of transients who reside there build bonfires to warm the space sufficiently enough for domestic comfort. Wrecking Ball, a burly transient with a cleanly shaven head and a gold incisor, is the shot caller in the illegally occupied structure.   

Compared to most of the dwellers in the encampment, Wrecking Ball is well-dressed, decked out in brand label outdoor winter gear. Most of the apparel he wears has been shoplifted for him by the homeless who live in what he calls “Wrecking Ball Mansion.” The former college football player, whose career was cut short by a suspension he was given after paralyzing an opposing team’s quarterback in a televised helmet-to-helmet tackle, considers the heisted goods legitimate rent money. Since he doesn’t like to think of himself as homeless and doesn’t like the company of those that look disheveled, he makes sure some encampment dwellers keep their own appearances up by shoplifting clothing for themselves as well.    

“Wheh I come from a ho is a ho and once you is tru wit ‘em, you want ‘em no mo,” says Wrecking Ball in a high-pitched nasally voice that does not accord with his linebacker’s build.

After he hears the misogynist comment from Wrecking Ball, the second iteration of Morris James©, 22-year-old clone grind-music star who has a meta-life contract with the 23^rd Century Global Entertainment corporation, grunts in feigned agreement and takes a hit from an angel dust laced joint that the street resident offers him. While James sings regularly with his band The Way Out in East Coast clubs, he has not yet reached national stardom in his current incarnation—much less the international stardom the first iteration and the original Morris James achieved during their lifetimes. The original James as well as the first iteration died at the age of 27, victims of what detractors considered rock stars’ dissolute lifestyles.  

James has been warned by Ruthie, a recently arrived resident at the Wrecking Ball Mansion and an acquaintance of James’ girlfriend’s, not to trust the encampment shot caller when he proposes getting dusted. “Everyone who smokes PCP with the Ball ends up dead or in the hospital,” Ruthie told James earlier in the evening.

Wrecking Ball is unaware he has been cavorting with the rock star clone for the past few days, and Ruthie has not disclosed that her girlfriend’s romantic partner, a singer in a not yet famous grind-music band, is visiting the encampment. James is on a bender and wears a beard, soiled clothing, mirrored shades and has not showered for a week wandering the cold streets of New York seeking affective arousal, the kind that he later synesthetically channels into his music when he performs. 

As if the effects of the angel dust weren’t enough to induce violent derangement, Wrecking Ball suffers from syphilopsychosis and he never wears protection when he has sex with women newly arrived to the encampment. He has not victimized Ruthie yet, but he has taken her white rabbit’s foot keychain, a lucky charm she was given by her younger brother before he passed away of leukemia last year. Wrecking Ball wears the charm on a chain around his neck. 

He considers the unhoused persons’ camp a grimy little kingdom in which his law is the only law. At 6’3” and 250 pounds he effectively lords over the dejected lot of unfortunates that have convinced themselves they’ve nowhere else to go. 

Ruthie is a college drop-out, ebony-skinned, petite with nappy hair. One of the reasons she and the sixty others who reside in the encampment stick around is that Wrecking Ball dispenses drugs for free. He uses the residents of the encampment as guinea pigs for testing the purity and efficacity of a steady supply of narcotics a clique of New York drug dealers keeps Wrecking Ball Mansion stocked with. 

Name the substance of your choice and the unhoused shot caller will provide it, free of monetary cost. He has a team of two in the unhoused persons' camp observe the effects of the drugs and report back to him. Ruthie started smoking heroin her senior year as a psychology student at Columbia, but dropped out of school as a result of the drug habit. Tonight, to dull her senses and mollify her conscience, she has asked to try a sample of the latest batch of smack from a dealer in the Bronx. 

Another reason why transients like Ruthie stay at Wrecking Ball Mansion is that its overlord threatens to mercilessly beat any defectors. 

When he was warned that Wrecking Ball viciously assaulted those that he smoked angel dust with, James couldn’t resist the temptation to push his luck. These are the moments that convince his acquaintances that the copyrighted clone, like his previous incarnations, is a grind-music god in the making. When he relives these escapades while singing under the influence of his preferred drug, moxie, a mood-enhancing hallucinogenic, his listeners and audience subconsciously pick up on them, and vicariously experience them.

Taking alternating hits of the PCP laced joint while inside the room in the building Wrecking Ball considers his sleeping quarters, James asks, “Are you stoned yet, Ball?” James poses the question as good-naturedly as he can, but immediately afterward slaps the encampment overlord soundly on the back of the neck.

Wrecking Ball is unused to anyone making aggressive physical contact with him. He is accustomed to always being the aggressor. The slap above the shoulder blades takes him by surprise and instantly saps him of the fearlessness he always feels when high on phencyclidine. Morris notes that Wrecking Ball’s usual scowl evaporates into a look of vulnerability. Instead of answering aggressively or with a counterblow, the Ball sheepishly says, “Yeah, I’m feelin’ it, nigga. How ‘bout you?”

Morris lets out a loud whoop, that further intimidates the unhoused ruffian. “You know what I wanna’ do, Ball? I want to fly. You think you can fly?” Even though Morris has deflated Wrecking Ball’s habitual stoned confidence, if he expects to execute the plan he has for the Ball tonight, he needs to inflate the bully’s ego, offer him an enticement. Morris knows exactly what bait to use.

“I hear Ruthie loves herself a thug who can fly. You ready to grow a set of wings for that sweet ying-yang of hers?” Morris hands the Ball a bottle of malt liquor after he takes a swig from it.

The Ball consumes what remains of the bottle in a series of uninterrupted gulps and emits a growling, “Yeah!”

“So, let’s go fly!”

“Yeah, nigga, let’s do this!”

When the two dusted and drunk aspiring apostates of gravity emerge from the Wrecking Ball’s private quarters into the common area of the occupied building’s ground floor, the unhoused bystanders, all warming themselves around bonfires, hoot and holler their approval. They are all high on one substance or another, and are surprised that they haven’t been called in to extract the James’ unconscious and bloodied body from the tent.

“Me and Ball are gonna fly!” shouts James to the throng. This announcement is met with further utterances of approval.  Ruthie sits on a crate in front of a fire nodding out in a heroin-induced stupor, but James’ whooping startles her awake.

“Ball,” she says after momentarily regaining her senses, “when are you going to give me back my lucky rabbit’s foot? My baby brother gave that to me.”

The homeless shot caller has no intention of giving it back until after he consummates his sexual urges with Ruthie. He tells Ruthie, “Hey baby, not quite yet. I’mma need this thang, if I’m finna fly.”

“Can we watch?” asks a young man who sits next to Ruthie and was propping Ruthie up from horizontality before she was awakened by James’ yelling. 

“Can you what?” yells the rock star clone. “Ball, is we offerin’ a peepshow for these jay-cat junkies? Everyone knows shot-caller demons don’t perform for junkies, right?”

Wrecking Ball takes the bait. He walks over to the not-so-innocent soul who had the gumption to speak up and kicks him in the ribs. 

Addressing Ruthie, the Ball croons, “When I come back I esspect…I ‘spect some good, good lovin,’” to the melody of a popular reggae tune from the previous century.

“Let’s go fuck some shit up before we fly,” says James.

The dusted duo takes to the nearly deserted midtown streets. James intimidates any passersby and goads Wrecking Ball to join in the intimidation.

As midnight approaches, James and the former linebacker stand at a corner where traffic is moderate. James takes a chunk of asphalt, loosened by a city snow plow from the street and hurls it through the window of a passing taxi, letting out a war cry as he does. The cabbie brakes hard, but too afraid to stop and confront the hooligans, thinks better of the situation and steps on the accelerator when he sees Wrecking Ball approaching the cab.  

Not to be upstaged by James’ antics, the Ball uses his steel-toed boot to kick a parked vehicle then climbs onto the car’s hood and smashes the windshield with a booted foot.

After half an hour of mayhem, James and Wrecking Ball, doing their best to simulate friendship, return to the unhoused persons’ encampment, where James lights a cigarette, offers it to the Ball, and says, “Countdown to take off.” As they bound up the stairs to the uppermost floor of the abandoned structure, James yells, “Remember, Ball wants no observers. You’ll just bring him bad luck.”

“I got all the luck I need right here,” says Ball fingering the rabbit’s foot charm he keeps from Ruthie. 

James urges Wrecking Ball to light another live wire, or PCP-laced blunt, and asks the homeless czar, “So, what kind a bird you want to be, Ball?” as they approach the roof of the building, nine stories up. “You want to be a hummingbird?”

“Naw, I wanna be a killa hawk!”

“You want to be a love dove?”

“Naw, I wanna be an evil eagle!”

“You want to be a terrible pterodactyl?”

“Naw, I wanna be a wrecking bird!”

Once on the rooftop, James and Wrecking Ball, passing the blunt back and forth, approach the low two-foot-wide, four-foot-tall barrier separating them from a hundred-foot drop. James climbs atop it, holds his arms akimbo and urges the dusted unhoused chieftain to do the same. Wrecking Ball hesitates.

“Are you a wrecking bird or are you just a big chicken?” prods James.

“Big chicken, my black ass,” says Wrecking Ball as he joins James on the wall. 

James whoops, as does the unsuspecting hood, but before Wrecking Ball can cherish his stoned achievement, James snatches Ruthie’s lucky charm from the drug pushing bully’s neck than delivers a side kick to Wrecking Ball’s quadricep, a kick with just enough force to send him plummeting earthbound.   

“I wrecked the Wrecking Ball,” screams Morris maniacally, still perched on the rooftop wall. 

Below at street level, denizens of what was once Wrecking Ball Mansion crowd around the fallen body of their evil-doing benefactor. When James joins them, he says, “When the Italian dictator Mussolini was hung after he gutted Italy by war mongering, his compatriots spit on his hanging corpse.”

Initially they look at each other in disbelief, but then one of the unhoused spectators summons up the courage to spit on Wrecking Ball’s quickly cooling corpse. Soon thereafter another and then another of the condemned building’s occupants takes turns expectorating on the prostate body. 

James notices Ruthie is not in the crowd of morbid celebrants. He goes inside the building and finds her sleeping next to a fire. It is half past midnight. It is Christmas. James rouses her from her sleep and says, “It’s time for you to go home, Ruthie.”

“Where’s Ball?” she manages to utter from the depths of her lingering heroin high.

“Ball’s gone and he’s not coming back. He wanted me to give you this,” James says, handing Ruthie her rabbit’s foot.

In a semi-conscious slur, Ruthie says, “Thank you! It’s just what I wanted,” and hugs James.

“Merry Christmas, Ruthie,” says the grind-music star clone before he gathers his belongings and heads back to the East Village to his girlfriend’s warm apartment for a decent meal, a bath and a morning of less morose celebration.