Page 15 of The Cocky for Cody
“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”
“Keep still!” He squirted sunscreen on my shoulders. It was cool and I felt immediate relief, which made me realize that my skin was indeed burning up.
Gently he lathered the lotion over my glowing flesh. “How does that feel?”
“Better,” I nodded, the mere motion of my head flaring up the heat in my neck, my ears, my scalp.
“Once I slick you up, you’ll start to feel some relief and—”
Whoosh!
Flap!
“Squark!”
“Fuck! Kevin!”
I wasn’t sure what had just happened behind me until I spotted that wicked white cockatoo flying into the sky…
And in his claws was Cody’s pump bottle of sunscreen.
“Kevin!” Cody shouted furiously. “You bring that back right now, or else…”
“Or else what?” the cocky challenged, perching himself in a tree, one foot on the branch and the other claw clinging to the dangling sunscreen bottle.
“Or else I’m gonna pluck all your feathers off and wring your bloody neck.”
“Squark!Come and get me, big fella!” With a flap of his wings, Kevin took off over the hill and out of sight.
“Fuuuuuuck!” Cody screamed at the sky. He turned back to me, staring at me like I was now some spit roast gone wrong. “We’ve gotta get you home! Right now!”
With every step along the rocky trail back to the shack, my body turned to fire, my skin searing hot and my muscles starting to seize up. It didn’t help that I was also covered in our two towels and the picnic rug, as well as my clothes and Cody’s shirt. The items had been tied and twisted around my head, my waist, my arms, my legs, to conceal every inch of me from the sun’s rays, making me look more like some mutant, post-apocalyptic cloak rack than an actual human being.
When we reached the shack, there was no sign of Kevin other than the pump bottle of sunscreen he’d left sitting on the kitchen table.
“My God,” I breathed in pain. “He’s like a serial killer collecting trophies.”
Cody bundled me into the bathtub outside, filling it with water and as much ice as he could get out of his freezer.
But it wasn’t until the sun began to set that I truly felt the fire inside melting away my skin.
Cody had laid me on the bed by that stage, and at half-hourly intervals he rolled me over and smothered me in aloe vera and a medical cream which was used to treat burns.
“I’m so sorry,” he kept apologizing. “I should have made sure you were covered up. This is all my fault.”
“It’s okay,” I muttered feebly. “Although can you roll me over a little slower? I’m feeling kind of dizzy and nauseous.”
“You’ve got sunstroke, on top of the burns,” he explained. “I’m going to give you something to help you sleep. What you need now is to stay as still as possible and rest.”
Cody found some sleeping pills he sometimes used to help him sleep on his trips away, and it wasn’t long before I slipped into a slumber so deep I feared I might never wake up. On the slippery slopes of unconsciousness, I slid into a nightmare in which I was being escorted by demons through the fires of hell, eventually leading me to the lair of the Devil.
Only it wasn’t Satan who ruled over the fiery pits of the netherworld.
“Squark!”
Perched on the top of a throne made of skulls—being fed grapes by an enslaved Cody who was clad in nothing but chains and a leather G-string—was none other than Kevin.
“Well, well, well, look who we have here,” the contemptible cocky cawed. “If it isn’t that slaggy scrubber from the United Skanks of America. It’s time to face your punishment, you troublesome trollop.”
