Kenny Powers looked out over the field and thought back to how he had left everything he knew back in North Carolina. Again. He left everything he knew once already, when he had found himself down on his luck and out of baseball, the money drying up like cum inside a sock, and he was forced by some Jew bank to abandon his fucking kick-ass mansion that was full of baller stuff like a bar made entirely out of white chrome and fake zebra skins. And a hot tub in the anatomical shape of his dick. Now, for a second time he was starting over. He had abandoned April at a gas station because his soul was just fucking crushed like that meteor in Deep Impact crushed the world by the news that he would not be returning to the bigs. He’d driven all night, out past Schaeffer BMW, past Jefferson Middle and just out past everything. Riding that big black stallion that is the open highway.

Eventually he found himself here, in Dillon, Texas. He spent the first night getting herpes from a woman with four teeth that he met a local hillbilly bar. Or maybe it was a gas station. He was mostly blacked out. He spent the next three weeks trying to find a house where him and his herpes could live. Now he was here, at Dillon High, coaching baseball and selling weed to sophomores out behind the dumpsters.

“Mornin’ coach,” a voice behind him said.

“Go fuck yourself, Taylor.” Kenny gave Coach Taylor the finger.

“Alright now, you have a good day.” Coach Taylor tipped his visor and walked out towards the football field in his queer khaki shorts, and his shirt that was ironed like he was on his way to a gay bar.

The football team got all the money and all the glory. Bunch of men hugging each other as tight as they could and rolling on the ground. Kenny used to eat football players for breakfast, and that’s not a metaphor. He used to literally murder, cook, and then eat football players for breakfast, because he was a fucking God. No he didn’t. But he could have. No one would tell him shit. Now he’s got Principal Taylor breathing down his neck every day, telling him what to do. She should leave him be and start telling her great set of tits what to do. “Get out of that shirt,” is what she should be saying. “You get out here and show yourselves.”

The football players came running past him, carrying their helmets and all types of gay shit. Talking. Smiling. It was gross. He looked back at the school to see where his team was, but they were nowhere in sight. The school seemed tiny and quiet and sad. It looked like a turd. It was a turd. A turd in the toilet bowl of Kenny’s life. One of those fancy Japanese toilets that’s a computer. Kenny walked back to the locker rooms, his hands perched tightly on his hips, the police whistle swinging at his neck, his hair not moving in the breeze. “LET’S GO, YOU BITCHES!” The team looked up at him with disgust, which he knew must be their own self-loathing, seeing what they could never become. An impossible dream incarnated right before their eyes. “HUSTLE IT THE FUCK UP,” he shouted. “THIS IS NOT RECESS, SO GET YOUR HANDS OFF YOUR DICK EQUIPMENT AND GET YOUR HANDS ON YOUR BASEBALL EQUIPMENT AND LET’S MOVE.” And then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “Clear eyes, blah blah blah.”

“Nice herpes,” a redheaded nerd said.

Kenny put his hand to his mouth. “Thats not herpes, that’s Halloween makeup, I was working on my costume. I’m going as your mom.”

“Well it looks an awful lot like herpes,” the kid said.

“Well, it’s not, so why don’t you shut the fuck up and get out on the field.”

“Well it looks like herpes.”

“Well you would know, because you have herpes.”

Compared to the football field, with its Jumbotron, and its metal-halide lighting making the grass practically fucking glow like it was cash, the baseball diamond was a shit stain. Kenny was surprised that it wasn’t covered in black horseflies because of how shitty it was and how much horseflies loved shit. He made the players take some laps, and then he gave them a pep talk about this one time he saw a horse show in Tijuana for free because el celebridados no paymos.

“Coach, can I talk to you for a second?”

“The fuck you want, Taylor?”

“Look, I’m not in the business of telling other coaches how to do their jobs, but I don’t think talking like that with these stories and all this showin’ off is going to help you shape these boys into men.”

“How about I shape your face into…the shape of…the convex inversion…of my fist?”

Coach Taylor gave that horrible, fucking beautiful, charming smile of his that made Kenny so mad he could just melt into Coach Taylor’s arms he was so angry he hated him. And then Coach Taylor beat Kenny Powers so badly it was humiliating, because COACH TAYLOR DON’T PLAY NO GAMES.

The End.