Fragments Fiction

INCIDENT AT A SOCCER MATCH

October 2008

The evidence is on the surveillance tape, the evidence to prove the government's complicity to murder and overthrow this dictator and his evil cohort. Real men, hot and sexy flesh and blood men, men in all their naked glory -- their arms, their legs, their torsos, their minds -- turned to stone to further the fascistic aims of our Dictator.

Six months ago when the soccer season ended, vandals trashed the refreshment stand. After the vandalism, I installed a surveillance camera on the soccer pitch. I got the camera cheap from my nephew's second cousin who does corporate videos. Nothing of import happened until one sunny summer day, I saw the greatest of treacheries, the highest of treasons and the most excellent transformation ever put to video -- living men turned to stone.

Consigned to be a groundskeeper thanks to a mangled ankle when I was child, the government sent me to an Agriculture school. I wanted science but the government decreed that I was incapable of learning and must perform physical labor. They say it builds character and cleanses the soul. Horseshit, in my frank opinion. I now have the evidence to exact my revenge.

I watched the video. A canopy appeared at the far end of the soccer pitch. Coach Barstow and five of his best soccer players -- Raul, Dogboy, Peter-the-Great, Spudnuts and Mule -- sat on benches under a canopy doing not much of anything. They stared at the sky, their hands and feet, the canopy, the grass, a table filled with sports drinks and some tubs of white zinc oxide paste. A camera crew arrived from the other side of the field.

The team Forward, Spudnuts, whose body resembled a sack of muscular potatoes, tucked his socks into his shoes. His jock bulged and strained, overloaded by three potatoes was the line created by his fans. It was more than true. I used a lip-reading program to obtain their words. "This memorial soccer game ain't goin' to raise the dead," Spudnuts said.

For sure, but the league wants us naked," Coach Barstow responded.

"I got nothing to hide. I used run naked when I was small boy." Raul said as he pulled his sleeveless jersey off of his body. He stood a foot taller than anyone else on the team, his long arms and legs being an advantage for a goalie. His long endowment was an advantage for his patented entry from behind technique that left women screaming in pleasure.

"Too poor to buy clothes?" Dogboy snarked. Raul ignored the remark. Dogboy had a long nose, long tongue, a long line of fine silky hair running from his chest down his stomach to halfway up his uncut manhood and completely covering his testicles. He told his girlfriends he was part greyhound. They all agreed he was as furry as a dog and just loved it.

Spudnuts flexed his fleshy body and made his muscles ripple underneath his skin. He did this to relax and make the fans scream. "Well, five guys don't make a soccer match. Who we playing against?" Spudnuts asked. Coach Barstow turned his back to the rest of the team and undressed. When he turned back around, he answered Mule.

"Six, I'm playing with you guys. It's the least I can do to repay you for getting you guys into this mess. The league lined up six groundpounders dressed in blue body stockings. They'll blue-screen the dead men onto their bodies," Barstow said.

"You shittin' us? They're staging a fake match?" Mule asked. Mule was the shortest man on the team. His short legs moved him faster than most players and his bulk served to steamroll him past opponents. He got his nickname for two reasons. First, once he made a decision, he wouldn't change and two, he was hung like a mule, balls and all the rest nearly hung to his knees.

"That's fucked up man," Spudnuts tried to be solemn and naked at the same time. His teammates laughed at him and cursed at the fakery. Coach put his hand up to quiet the discontent.

"Look, I hate the idea as much as you do but it's part of the contract. Break the contract and trash your career." Coach Barstow opened one of the tubs of zinc oxide white and touched it. His hand trembled at the feel of the paste. I could see his body as he took a deep breath and spread the paste over his forearm. It spread like butter smooth and shiny, completely hiding the hair on his arms and making his muscles stand out.

"Good, we play soccer like young boys in my country, our dicks swinging free in the wind unencumbered by silly clothing." Raul did stretching exercises. His wiry body twisted into pretzel-like positions.

"Stark naked?" Peter-the-Great observed. Pete was a rocket on the field and his thick legs never seemed to grow tired. He turned and pulled his shorts off. The muscles of his legs and thighs bulged. Tribal tattoos swirled over his back and buttocks. His manhood resembled tennis balls hanging below a hunk of salami. He never shrank from the cold. Spudnuts opened a tub of the zinc oxide. The stuff smelled of mineral oil and shook his head. He slapped a handful onto his chest and spread it over his pectorals and shoulders.

"Peter-the-Great got something against swinging dicks?" Mule asked.

"My dick swinging in the wind or the breeze whizzing around my balls ain't my worry. It's smearing white stuff all over my body; ain't my idea of fun," Peter-the-Great said, smoothing paste onto his legs and feet. The paste stuck tight to their skin and didn't rub off on the grass.

"We're supposed to look like statues of Roman gladiators or Greek athletes come to life to honor the lost." Coach Barstow cut off the line of criticism. The rest of the team joined him in spreading the paste over their bodies. They gathered close to work the paste over each other's backs, under the arms, over their heads, in all the tight curves and tender parts of the human body. The hands made them horny and all six men grew thick and tumescent.

When the six zinced-white, well-endowed and muscular men stepped from under the canopy and onto the pitch, they stood face to mask with the sexless and sleek groundpounders in tight blue rubberized bodysuits. The conversation became trash talk between half-erect muscle men and sleek-bodied muscled groundpounders with their genitals hidden inside the suits. Coach Barstow wondered how the groundpounders could stay cool in those suits. I could see him looking for fasteners, zippers or seams. I did too. I suspect that the military simply sealed the men inside the suits. I put aside the thought of being permanently sealed inside a rubber suit and turned my attention to the six naked soccer players covered in a coating of paste that I now knew would be permanent.

The director of the film crew handed the white team mouth guards that even turned their teeth white. The mouthpieces stuck to their teeth and prevented them from talking. I could see them breath and drink through small holes in their mouthpieces. Peter-the-Great and Raul moaned and mimed objections, but Coach Barstow shut them down with a few hand signs.

The director and his two-man crew supervised the setup of a special camera with lighting by two-dozen laser systems setting on the sidelines. He blocked out the various action shots and explained to the teams what the scenario was. Then he unleashed them to play soccer in the sight angles and for the cameras. The lasers kept outlining their bodies as they played, two to each man. The hot sun baked the soccer team turning the white past slick and shiny. The more they sweat, the smoother the white paste became on their skin. Their bodies grew glossy, marble smooth. Their white paste bonded with their skin, turning them slick and shiny. They broke frequently for sports drinks. The groundpounders blue suits steamed to dissipate the sweat from the men's bodies encased within the rubber.

Both teams played for the cameras and lasers in the hot afternoon sun. Their zinc-white bodies lost fat and became ripped and buffed. The director put them through complex plays and insisted they execute them with all the excitement of winning plays and goals. Before the sun moved away from the high sky, the director gathered the soccer team for a group picture. He told them that the lasers would measure their bodies down to thousandths of an inch. A special group would reconstruct the soccer team in marble castings. Coach Barstow had to know this wasn't true but he never moved to stop it. The director posed each team of the men, explaining how he wanted them to flex and stand. Then he had the camera and laser operators circle them so each laser could take their body measurements.

A laser orbiting high in the sky, burst forth with a beam of gamma energy. It activated the transmutation of human flesh into living stone and as the land-based lasers froze the exterior of each soccer player, their bodies became living marble. I wondered what they felt as their bodies change to stone. I knew Raul, Dogboy, Peter-the-Great, Spudnuts, and Mule and I envied them the changes that now rampaged through their bodies. Their flesh and blood and minds turned to stone, living petrifaction. My heart nearly leaped from my flesh. I watched as they crated the statues and loaded them on trucks with the help of the laser operators.

Then the six blue suited groundpounders did something that surprised me. Still in their rubberized costumes, all sleek and sexless, they stood in the middle of the field and submitted willingly to the gamma laser. Rather than turning to stone, the rubberized men simply collapsed into heaps. The film crew picked up what to my eyes appeared to be full-body rubber suits. Somewhere in the military, six frogmen will get new wetsuits formed from human bodies. The capabilities of those suits boggle my mind. The video loop ended but I stood entranced by the idea of wearing a human being to do deep sea diving.

At the dedication of the soccer memorial a few days later, I recognized the film crew. I stayed silent. I watched as the local mayoral flunky unveiled six marble statues of naked men playing soccer. I recognized the soccer team. The crowd marveled at the detail. I also marveled knowing their secret. As part of the city park, it fell to me to take care of the soccer memorial. Each day I wiped down the statues and polished them. Each night I visited the statues and worshiped the stone bodies with my hands, with my tongue and in the most inappropriate ways possible, according to the government.

Yesterday, I sent a copy of the surveillance tape to the government with my demands. Eight hours later, a tub of zinc-white paste and instructions to meet the film crew on the soccer pitch arrived with two well-built young soldiers. In return for my supposed silence, the government promised to place me in the local museum as a javelin thrower. I wonder what I will feel when the gamma ray hits. I've hidden this record inside a picture on the soccer memorial's website. In a few years, the international soccer tournament will return. Then the picture will dissolve and my story will be revealed. And for you disbelievers, I am not a hoax. You can check out the video and make life-force measurements on the soccer statues.

As for fighting the dictatorship and freeing the masses, I apologize for having dreams of a life beyond flesh and blood, a life in marble.

1975 words more or less