The Curse of the Flunkers

Not really. Dropping out was a preemptive measure.

"I was flunking every course, Finky. Figured it's better to drop out than to flunk out."

"So you dropped out 'cause you were flunking out."

"Technically speaking, so to speak."

"Does that make you a flunker like..."

Beno Wax who flunked third grade and at seventeen, was run over by a pizza delivery car while crossing the street on the way to Pooties's in Fort Lauderdale. He never lived to see that Wet T contest.

Kenny Frick who flunked fifth grade and at nineteen, was shot dead by police while breaking into the home of his former elementary school principal, Irving Lesniak. And while Frick managed to squeeze in taking a dump on the desk in Lesniak's oak-paneled study, he never lived to savor that sweet act of revenge.

One-Ball Speigel, St. Claire Pool's famed belly-flop artist, who flunked sixth grade, and at twenty-one, choked to death on a chicken bone at Tito's Bar-B-Q during his annual bowling banquet. He never lived to hold his MVP trophy of the St. Claire Adult Bowling league.

If there was some cruel and mystical pattern attached to scholastic failure in Harry's humble St. Claire neighborhood, then his days left were few.

"No it doesn't Finky, I'm now officially a drop-out. My transcript will have straight incompletes instead of straight F's. Big difference."

"Not really, Harry. You're doomed like Beno Wax, Kenny Frick and One-Ball Speigel."

"I don't think so. Besides, that kind of freaky shit happens in threes, not fours."

"But there's a pattern to the flunkers' deaths. Wax died at seventeen, Frick at nineteen and One-Ball at twenty-one. In two years you'll be twenty-three."

"Fuck off you ghoul...and stop looking at me that way."

"What way?"

"Y'know, that ghoulish beady-eyed-look way."

"That's just the way I look, Harry. I have deep inset eyes and a fairly large nose."

"A fucking beak, man, a fucking beak."

"That's it Harry. We weren't all blessed with your good looks."

"What good will that do me? According to you I have less than two years to live."

"Yeah," Finky laughed."Can you leave me in your will your hockey card collection. You know how much that Bobby Orr rookie card would mean to me."

"You're not funny, finky. I feel like you're hexing me."

"Nah, it's just my ghoulish beady-eyed look."

"I don't think we should've smoked that second joint, Finky."

"I do, this is funny." Finky stared at Harry and laughed. "Look at the bright side, we'll all die sooner or later, at least you'll leave behind a handsome corpse. I'd take your good looks over mine any day even with the curse."

"Since we can't exchange faces you'll have to settle for the curse. I now transfer it to you, Ronnie Finkelstein. But first, let's smoke another joint."

"And still you wonder why you flunked out."

"Dropped out, you mean."

Finky shot Harry a ghoulish beady-eyed look and laughed. "You roll."