Fade

<This story includes a lot of cursing>

Dylan Jackson was mid backhand when he kicked over the bottle of Budweiser that he had forgotten he had placed down on the tee pad just thirty seconds previous.

“Fuck!”, he muttered to himself as the bottle shattered across the concrete, “Double fuck!” he screamed as his beat-up KC Pro Roc careened off of a fairway tree and deep into the woods of the Cumberland Creek Disc Golf Course.

Dylan disappointedly kicked the glass off of the pad and into the surrounding grass. He had bought a six pack, and drank one on the way to the course. He had another while waiting for his numnuts brother to show up, one while overriding auto correct suggesting he was calling him a ducking pissy for choosing to sleep in instead of disc with him, and this was the one he had opened while walking down the fairway of one. It was 6:15 on an already humid June morning.

Lighting up a Marlboro Light he did some quick math- he was on hole three now, with three beers left which means that- goddammit, he was going to have seriously pace himself the rest of the way. Fuck that noise. Maybe he’d just play nine.

“Mulligan,” he muttered to himself as he picked out a new driver from his bag. This one was yellow and looked like about a ten speed. Made by some douchy European company. It was called a Stål, whatever the fuck that means.

It also wasn’t his disc, but he’d found it on the course yesterday and it seemed to fly all right. The owner had written their phone number on the back so that in case they lost it, some kind soul could return it to them. Dylan thought that was some seriously stupid shit. Don’t lose your disc if you don’t want someone else to find it. He had then done his now familiar routine of taking out his own Sharpie, crossing out the old number, and replacing it with his own. Fuck, if people were going to be gullible enough to go around giving back perfectly good they discs found, who was he to stop them.

The Stål flipped up nicely, turned ever so slightly to avoid the tree he'd hit the throw before, and settled about ten feet short of the basket after a short controlled finish. “Hell yeah!,” he shouted to an empty park. He’d be playing that one for sure.

He found his Roc just off the fairway lying at the base of a Cedar tree. He stubbed his cigarette out on its bark and tossed the butt a couple further feet off into the woods. He put the disc back in his well weathered disc golf bag and made his way to his second drive admiring the lie and replaying its flight as got closer to the nearly parked Stål. He would be bragging about this one for a couple days- hole three was a tough birdie to get.

Setting down his bag, Dylan pulled out his trusty Aviar- he’d been using this putter for months and thought it must have some good juju on it. He straddled behind the Stål and set up his putt. He would never straddle if he weren’t alone on the grounds that he thought it looked kind of gay, but he thought it actually felt pretty good.

The Aviar caught weak side chains and looked like it was going to fall into the basket’s tray, but ended up sneaking out the backside and falling to the ground instead.

“Whatever,” Dylan said, as he opened UDisc on his phone. He picked up the putter, put himself down for a two because that’s what he should have gotten, and moved on to hole four.

Four was a beaut of a hole. Downhill dog leg to the left with woods on either side. The basket itself sat in a small shaded grove about twenty feet off of the creek the park was named for. It was a perfect little place to blaze up mid-round and shortly Dylan would be doing just that. But it was also a lot of fun to throw and Dylan considered it one of his specialties on the course.

The key was to throw something overstable, angle it just inches off the hill all the way down, and have it skip off the dirt floor and up towards the basket which was just out of sight from the tee pad. His dream was to skip ace this one, but it would be just his luck that if he ever did it would be when nobody was around to see it. Dylan picked out a blue meat hook of a Destroyer, kissed it once for good luck, and then ripped it backhand down the hill. The disc flipped just enough to straighten out, but then, as intended, it started quickly diving to ground as it approached the bottom of the hill.

“Fuck fuck fuck MAYBE,” Dylan stammered, already fantasizing about retelling this ace to his fuck turd of a brother. The disc caught dirt and skipped, hurtling up and towards the basket. Dylan’s heart skipped a beat as he listened for the sound of glorious chains. But instead he heard a soft splash.

“Motherfuck Jesus Tits!” What a stupid fucking hole.

He didn’t even bother with a mulligan this time because he needed to get down there and hope the disc got caught on some rock in the creek or something. He heaved down the hill, knees buckling just a bit every time he caught a loose rock. Then, as he reached the bottom and turned the corner by the basket he saw some dickweed standing in the creek and holding his Destroyer.

“Hey, what the fuck do you think you’re…”, Dylan started to say. But he couldn’t finish the sentence because he took a ball golf three wood to the back of his head, collapsing by the basket, and dying instantly with three unopened Budweisers still to go.