Centennial Park
by FreeThinker
Prologue
The sun was just setting below the trees to the west as the two young men sat on the bench beside the bandstand. Across the park before them, a dozen or so boys frolicked about the grass, tossing Frisbees among themselves, tackling each other, and yelling good-natured insults back and forth. A Parks Department employee was cleaning the giant green army tank on the northeast corner of the park, removing the latest anti-war insult to President Nixon painted on it by students from the college across Twelfth Street. Locusts sang in the trees, their songs undulating from one tree to the next. Lightening bugs darted about and starlings gathered along the power lines bordering the park and chattered among themselves.
The two young men, one tall and blond with wire-rimmed glasses, the other slightly shorter with dark curls around over his head and down to his collar, smiled at each other. The blond stood and made a brief comment before strolling toward a yellow brick building at the south end of the park. He walked past a garden of marigolds, zinnias, and cannas until he came to a patio beside the building, on which several green wooden picnic tables had been arranged. Sitting at one of them was a rough looking man in his mid-twenties. His dirty-blond hair was uncombed and there was a brown stubble on his face. His sleeveless t-shirt revealed a tattoo on his upper left arm. The t-shirt was filthy, as were his jeans and work boots. The blond man glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, but thought nothing else of him as he walked past and opened a door beside the old red Coke machine.
He entered the men's room and walked past the sinks, above which one of the mirrors had been cracked. Turning a corner, a long trough-like urinal stood opposite three stalls from which the doors had been removed. Trying to hold his breath to avoid the unpleasant odor, he stood before the trough, unzipped, and began to relieve himself.
His sense of concern was aroused as he heard the door to the restroom open and the sound of boots stepping slowly across the filthy floor. The man who had been seated on the patio slowly walked past him. He looked straight ahead, not reading the numerous graffiti on the wall, willing his bladder to empty faster. However, when he heard first the sound of jeans unzipping and the unmistakable sound of skin rubbing against skin, he stopped.
As he began to put himself back together, he heard a voice ask him a crude question. Glancing to his side, he saw the man facing him, exposed, his jeans open, stroking himself. He shook his head quickly and started to raise his zipper, when the man angrily grabbed his shoulder and roughly turned him back, facing him. Repeating his question forcefully, he looked angrily at the young man, who turned around again and started to take a step toward the door. The man grabbed him again, spun him around, and then rammed his fast into the young man's stomach. Falling to his knees in agony, he looked up at the man standing before him, his filthy member in the young man's face.
The man repeated his question; the younger man could only shake his head. In response, the man's knees struck the younger man's jaw, knocking his head back against the thin metal of the trough. A kick to his stomach sent the young man sprawling on the floor. Choking on his vomit, he tried to scream, but the kicks were too fast and furious for him to cry out. Sprawled in the urine, mud, and vomit on the floor, as the furious kicks pummeled his body, his last conscious thought was of the young man outside waiting for him.
And, then, he was no more.